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Besides water, California almonds are one of, if not the largest problem facing managed honeybees in the United States, due to the the agricultural practices of
by jly 9y ago
Besides water, California almonds are one of, if not the largest problem facing managed honeybees in the United States, due to the the agricultural practices of this industry and need to migrate in almost 2 million hives annually (first answer here has some good details: https://www.quora.com/Is-it-true-that-almonds-are-not-vegan https://www.quora.com/Is-it-true-that-almonds-are-not-vegan).
If you care about protecting our managed pollinators, giving up almonds is a good first step. I have also switched to peanuts.
- rripken 9y agoI sort of thought Almonds was _the_ reason we have migrating honeybees in the United States (or North America). In any case Zaiger Genetics have bred self-fertile Almonds that don't require bees. The trees are starting to be planted: http://www.growingproduce.com/nuts/self-fertile-almond-dominates-new-plantings/ http://www.growingproduce.com/nuts/self-fertile-almond-domin... Almond trees take a significant amount of time to mature. While orchards can be retrofitted the irrigation infrastructure is typically installed before the trees are planted. This means that the water use of an orchard currently producing almonds was probably designed in the 90s. All the new orchards I see being planted are using drip. In 2030 I suspect the water use per kg of almonds will be much lower than it is today.