Biotech is working to save the bees, which are the main pollinators of many major fruit and nut crops — bees pollinate 70% of crops in the world and generate an estimated economic value of more than $183,000 million globally. With up to 30% loss of species per year, the catastrophe of domesticated honeybee hives in the US alone is calculated at an estimated $2 billion reduction.The massive devastation in the bee population is threatening the almost $20 billion that bees contribute to US crop production annually. How can farmers adapt to a world of rapidly declining bee populations? What is biotech doing to offset the deterioration of bee populations?Beekeepers are constrained by the reality of the Anthropocene: novel ecologies, shifting baselines, and the hybridity of honey bees themselves—part wild animal subject to environmental change; part industrial organism, embedded in circuits of migratory pollination.It can be argued that there are many reasons that collectively contribute to honeybees’ disappearance:Decreasing crop diversityInvasive parasitesLong cold wintersHabitat loss / decline in bees’ dietsPoor managementInsecticideFor a long time, one cause weighed more significantly than all the others together: the heavy commercial agriculture use of pesticides, a class of insecticides called neonicotinoids, which has had a lethal effect on bees. The problem was so severe even a decade ago that President Barack Obama unveiled the first-ever national strategy for improving the health of bees and other key pollinators.Now there’s another, more insidious culprit: human-caused climate change. Climate change has become a new and formidable stressor for bees, potentially amplifying previously known issues. As UC Davis outlines, extreme rainfall can disrupt bees’ foraging patterns

Don't worry, we speak : Español (Spanish), too!. A mix of tradition and innovation makes Argentina fertile ground for agribusiness and food startups to grow. Find out what opportunities this sector represents and why it could solve the problems of the future

Reworth, a Mexican startup using cashback to enable banks and retailers to understand their customers' behavior better, recently increased its seed round to US$6.6