Yield vulnerability of low-income smallholders to pollinator declines in Brazil is biome-dependent
Willams Oliveira, Rafaella Guimarães Porto, Oswaldo Cruz-Neto, Marcelo Tabarelli, Blandina Felipe Viana, Carlos A. Peres, Ariadna Valentina Lopes

TL;DR
Pollinator declines in Brazil disproportionately affect low-income smallholder farmers, with impacts varying by biome and crop type.
Contribution
This study reveals biome-specific vulnerability patterns and how soybean production masks social disparities in pollination risks.
Findings
58% of Brazil's leading crops depend on pollinators, with 96.8% of municipalities vulnerable to pollinator failure.
Soybean alone accounts for over half of Brazil's economic value of pollination.
Vulnerability increases in low-income municipalities in the Atlantic Forest, Cerrado, and Caatinga biomes when soybean is excluded.
Abstract
Habitat loss and degradation, mainly driven by agricultural expansion and intensification, alter ecological processes, ecosystem services and human well-being at a global scale. Pollinator populations in degraded agricultural areas tend to collapse, which in turn can reduce the effective pollination of agricultural crops and food production, particularly in leading food producing countries, such as Brazil. We sought to understand how the vulnerability to pollinator failure and the economic value of pollination (EVP) are associated with farmland size, farmer income, habitat loss, and the size of the human footprint. We also examine socioeconomic predictors related to income inequality levels across Brazilian municipalities and phytogeographic domains. We show that 58% of all leading crops in Brazil are dependent to some degree on animal pollination, and agricultural production in 96.8%…
Genes, proteins, chemicals, diseases, species, mutations and cell lines named across the full text — each resolved to its canonical identifier and authoritative record.
Click any figure to enlarge with its caption.
Figure 1
Figure 2
Figure 3
Figure 4
Figure 5
Figure 6
Figure 7
Figure 8
Figure 9
Figure 10
Figure 11
Figure 12
Figure 13
Figure 14
Figure 15
Figure 16Peer Reviews
No public reviews on file for this paper yet. If you reviewed it on a platform where reviews are public (OpenReview, ICLR, NeurIPS, ICML), you can paste yours below so the community can read it here.
Videos
No videos yet. Explain this paper in a talk, walkthrough, or lecture? Add one.
Taxonomy
TopicsPlant and animal studies · Conservation, Biodiversity, and Resource Management · Insect and Pesticide Research
