Pollinators and people

This presentation integrates the concepts of geography and food systems through the movement of seeds. The remaking of power relationships lies in the precarity of the human-pollinator-plant relationship, where the responsibility falls to humans to recognize, value, and protect the non-human ‘other’ and their critical role in this reciprocal relationship. Cucurbita crops (pumpkins and squash) have traced a pathway from their origins in Meso America across the Americas through the movement of human seed-sharing and trade routes. The spread of these crops facilitated the spread of one of their most important pollinators, the wild hoary squash bee that co-evolved with the crops’ wild ancestors to become a Cucurbita pollen specialist. Because no wild Cucurbita species grow in much of North America, the bee's survival depends on crops because they provision their young exclusively with Cucurbita pollen. Thus people, a food crop, and a wild bee have developed a long-standing, robust relationship. Yet, one of the biggest threats to this relationship is insecticide use in agriculture. To survive, a radical reframing of this socio-ecological system by humans is needed to recognize, value, and protect the integrity of the crop and pollinator for the benefit of all. The COVID-19 pandemic shone a spotlight on the precarity of this reciprocal relationship, leading to human actions to plant pumpkins despite the cancelling of pumpkin festivals with the sole purpose of supporting hoary squash bees as members of the human-crop-pollinator reciprocal relationship.