Pollinators & Soil Biodiversity 授粉者 · 土壤生物多样性 An Earth LinC station

The work
nobodyput a price on.

无人计价的劳动力

Every third mouthful you eat was handled, before you, by an animal that was never paid, and grown in a soil run by creatures you have never seen. This page is a bill that has never been sent.

你吃下的每三口食物里，大约有一口，先经过了一只从未领过工资的动物；而它生长的土壤，由一群你从没见过的生命在运转。这一页，是一张从未寄出的账单。

The question / 那个问题

This problem is older than I am. I really want to ask: has it got better, or worse? And why do I feel nothing at all?

这是一个比我还年纪大的问题。我真的想问，它是变好了，还是变坏了？我怎么一点感觉都没有？是不是大家也没有感觉。

Not a book — a book couldn't finish it. Not a research paper — it would stay in the tower. Just four small stories, a few numbers that can be checked, and the honest reason the loss is so hard to feel.

不写成一本书，一本书也写不完；不写成一篇研究报告，它会停在象牙塔里。只有几个很小的故事，几个可以被核对的数字，以及一个诚实的解释：为什么这种损失，这么难被感觉到。

Invoice for services rendered已提供服务的账单

Invoice no. 0000 — ongoing Issued 开具 never 从未 Payment terms 付款条件 none 无
01

Pollination of the world's leading food crops — apples, coffee, cocoa, almonds, squash, blueberries, canola.

为全球主要粮食与经济作物授粉：苹果、咖啡、可可、扁桃仁、南瓜、蓝莓、油菜。

75% Of leading crop types depend at least partly on animal pollination · 主要作物类型中，至少部分依赖动物授粉的比例 (IPBES 2016)
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02

Value of annual global food production placed at risk if these workers stop showing up.

如果这些劳动力不再出现，每年全球粮食产量中处于风险中的价值。

US$235–577bnper year 每年 IPBES Pollinators Assessment, 2016
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Tillage, drainage, nutrient delivery — done in the dark, without machinery, by earthworms.

耕作、排水、养分输送——在黑暗中完成，不用任何机械，由蚯蚓承担。

6.5% Of global grain production attributable to earthworms ≈ 140 million tonnes a year · 全球谷物产量中约 6.5% 可归功于蚯蚓，约合每年 1.4 亿吨 (Fonte et al., 2023)
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Everything else: carbon storage, water holding, disease suppression, the slow manufacture of fertility itself.

其余的一切：固碳、保水、抑制病害，以及肥力本身缓慢的制造过程。

59% Of all species on Earth live in soil — the most biodiverse habitat we have · 地球上 59% 的物种生活在土壤中，这是地球上生物多样性最高的栖息地 (PNAS, 2023)
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Total invoiced to date · 至今累计开票金额 0.00
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Service status: still running. Partially interrupted in an unknown number of places. The workforce has never invoiced, never struck, and never explained itself. It simply thins.

服务状态：仍在运行，在不明数量的地点已局部中断。这支劳动力从不开票，从不罢工，也从不解释自己。它只是变薄。

Three places / 三个地方

Where it already happened.

它已经发生过的地方。

Maoxian, Sichuan, China中国四川茂县 · 1980s → now

Spring arrives with ladders.春天是扛着梯子来的。

In the apple orchards of Maoxian, people pollinate the trees themselves. They climb with brushes made of chicken feathers and cigarette filters, and touch flower after flower, one by one, for days. They started in the 1980s, after the bees stopped coming — pesticides, and no wild flowers left between the rows. Researchers who documented it found whole villages hiring in labour each spring to do what insects had always done for free.

在茂县的苹果园里，人自己给树授粉。他们带着鸡毛和香烟过滤嘴做的小刷子爬上树，一朵一朵地点过去，一点就是好几天。这件事从 1980 年代开始——蜜蜂不来了，因为农药，也因为果树行间再没有野花。记录这件事的研究者发现，每年春天整个村子都要雇工，去做昆虫原本免费做的事。

The labour did not disappear. It changed hands. 劳动没有消失，只是换了一双手。

Central Valley, California, USA美国加州中央谷地 · every February 每年二月

A million acres bloom on the same weekend.上百万英亩，在同一个周末开花。

California's almonds flower all at once, in a valley that feeds insects for three weeks and starves them for forty-nine. So the pollinators are trucked in: the large majority of the commercial honey bee colonies in the United States travel across the country each February, work the bloom, and leave. We did not fix the shortage — we solved it with logistics, and the missing wild pollinators now show up on the balance sheet as a hive rental fee.

加州的扁桃仁在同一时间开花，而这片谷地只能养活昆虫三周，剩下的四十九周它是一片荒漠。于是授粉者被卡车运进来：美国绝大部分商业蜂群每年二月穿越全国，干完花期就走。我们没有修复短缺，我们用物流绕过了它——消失的野生授粉者，如今出现在财务报表上，名字叫"蜂箱租金"。

Krefeld, Germany德国克雷菲尔德 · 1989 → 2016

They weighed the insects for 27 years.他们称了二十七年的虫子。

A club of amateur entomologists set the same traps in 63 protected areas, year after year, and simply wrote down the weight of what flew in. When scientists analysed the jars in 2017, flying insect biomass had fallen 76% — inside nature reserves, with nothing obviously wrong. Nobody watched it happen. That is exactly the point: it happened at the speed of a human life.

一群业余昆虫爱好者，在 63 个自然保护区里年复一年地放同样的诱捕器，只是老老实实地记下飞进来的虫子有多重。2017 年科学家分析这些标本瓶时发现：飞行昆虫的生物量下降了 76%——就在保护区里，表面上什么都没出错。没有人"看见"它发生。这正是问题所在：它是以一个人的一生为单位发生的。

Nothing screamed. 没有任何东西尖叫过。

Better or worse / 变好还是变坏

Both, at the same time — and that is the trap.

同时变好，也同时变坏——这正是陷阱所在。

What grew增长的部分

  • +85%Managed honey bee hives worldwide since 1961.1961 年以来，全球饲养蜂箱数量。
  • ×3+Area of pollinator-dependent crops planted over the last fifty years — demand rising faster than pollinators.近五十年，依赖授粉的作物种植面积增长三倍以上——需求比授粉者增长得快。
  • fullSupermarket shelves. Yields held up. Prices barely moved.货架仍然是满的，产量顶住了，价格几乎没动。

What thinned变薄的部分

  • −76%Flying insect biomass in 63 German protected areas, 1989–2016.德国 63 个保护区的飞行昆虫生物量，1989–2016。
  • 1 in 10European bee and butterfly species threatened with extinction; about one in three is declining.约十分之一的欧洲蜂类与蝴蝶面临灭绝威胁，约三分之一在减少。
  • 33%Of the world's soils moderately to highly degraded — the workforce's own workplace.全球三分之一的土壤已中度至高度退化——那是这支劳动力的车间。

Why you feel nothing / 为什么没有感觉

The shelves stayed full, so the loss never reached your hands.货架一直是满的，所以这场损失，从来没有走到你的手上。

There are three reasons, and none of them are your fault. The loss is small — most of it is under three millimetres long, or underground, or both. The loss is slow — it moves at the pace of decades, and every generation quietly accepts the world it was born into as the normal one. Ecologists have a name for this: shifting baselines.

有三个原因，没有一个是你的错。它太小——大部分不足三毫米长，或者在地下，或者两者都是。它太慢——以几十年为单位移动，而每一代人都会安静地把自己出生时的世界，当作"本来就是这样"。生态学家给这件事起过一个名字：基线偏移。

And the loss is padded — by trucks, by rented hives, by fertiliser, by hands on ladders in Sichuan. The buffer is real, and it is working, and it is expensive, and it is finite. Feeling nothing is not evidence that nothing is happening. It is evidence that someone, somewhere, is currently paying the difference.

还有第三个原因：它被垫住了——被卡车、被租来的蜂箱、被化肥、被四川梯子上的那双手垫住。这个缓冲是真实的，它确实在起作用，它很贵，而且是有限的。没有感觉，并不证明什么都没发生；它只证明，此刻有人在某个地方，替你把差额付了。

You are not unrelated to this.你不是没有关系。

In one teaspoon 一茶匙里

Healthy soil holds up to a billion bacteria and metres of fungal thread in a teaspoon. It is the densest crowd on Earth, and it lives directly under whatever you last walked on.

一茶匙健康土壤里，可含多达十亿个细菌和数米长的真菌菌丝。那是地球上最密集的人群，就住在你刚刚走过的地方底下。

On one plate 一只盘子上

Coffee, chocolate, apples, almonds, tomatoes, oil, most colour and most vitamins on the plate: pollinator work. Rice and wheat are not — which is why the loss reads as a poorer diet long before it reads as hunger.

咖啡、巧克力、苹果、扁桃仁、番茄、食用油，盘子上大部分的颜色和维生素：都来自授粉者的劳动。水稻和小麦不是——所以这场损失会先表现为"更单调的饮食"，很久之后才表现为饥饿。

In one season 一个季节里

Uncut grass, a late-flowering weed, ground left undug, one less spray: pollinators and soil life respond to changes measured in metres and weeks. This is one of the very few losses that answers back quickly.

一片不修剪的草、一株晚开的野花、一块不翻动的土、少喷一次药：授粉者和土壤生物对以米和周为单位的改变都会作出反应。这是极少数会很快回话的损失之一。

Not a page that ends. 显然，这不是一篇能够启发的文章。我们继续。

Sources / 资料来源

Every number above, where it came from.

Nothing here is raised in volume. Each figure is linked to its source so you can check it, disagree with it, or go further than this page goes.

这里没有一句话是靠提高音量说出来的。每一个数字都附上出处，你可以核对它、反驳它，或者走得比这一页更远。

  1. IPBES (2016). Assessment Report on Pollinators, Pollination and Food Production. ipbes.net/assessment-reports/pollinators 75% 的主要作物类型依赖动物授粉；每年 2350–5770 亿美元的产量处于风险中。
  2. Klein, A.-M. et al. (2007). Importance of pollinators in changing landscapes for world crops. Proc. R. Soc. B. doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2006.3721 哪些作物依赖授粉者，依赖到什么程度。
  3. Potts, S. G. et al. (2016). Safeguarding pollinators and their values to human well-being. Nature 540, 220–229. doi.org/10.1038/nature20588 授粉依赖型作物面积扩张，与全球蜂群数量的对比。
  4. Hallmann, C. A. et al. (2017). More than 75 percent decline over 27 years in total flying insect biomass in protected areas. PLOS ONE. doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0185809 克雷菲尔德的故事：−76%，1989–2016。
  5. Anthony, M. A., Bender, S. F. & van der Heijden, M. G. A. (2023). Enumerating soil biodiversity. PNAS 120(33). doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2304663120 地球上约 59% 的物种生活在土壤中。
  6. Fonte, S. J. et al. (2023). Earthworms contribute significantly to global food production. Nature Communications. doi.org/10.1038/s41467-023-40792-y 全球谷物产量中约 6.5% 可归功于蚯蚓。
  7. FAO & ITPS (2015). Status of the World's Soil Resources — Main Report. fao.org/3/i5199e/i5199e.pdf 全球约三分之一的土壤处于中度至高度退化状态。
  8. Partap, U. & Ya, T. (2012). The Human Pollinators of Fruit Crops in Maoxian County, Sichuan, China. Mountain Research and Development. doi.org/10.1659/MRD-JOURNAL-D-11-00108.1 茂县的人工授粉：谁在做、为什么开始、代价是什么。
  9. USDA Economic Research Service (2018). Economic Effects and Responses to Changes in Honey Bee Health. ers.usda.gov · ERR-246 加州扁桃仁花期的蜂群迁移与蜂箱租金。
  10. European Commission — EU Pollinators Initiative. environment.ec.europa.eu · pollinators 欧洲约十分之一的蜂类与蝴蝶面临灭绝威胁。
  11. FAOSTAT — Live animals / beehives, global time series from 1961. fao.org/faostat 全球饲养蜂箱数量长期上升——与野生授粉者的下降形成对照。
  12. USDA NRCS — Soil Health & Soil Biology resources. nrcs.usda.gov · soil health 一茶匙土壤中的微生物数量级。
  13. Pauly, D. (1995). Anecdotes and the shifting baseline syndrome of fisheries. Trends in Ecology & Evolution 10(10). doi.org/10.1016/S0169-5347(00)89171-5 "基线偏移"：为什么我们感觉不到自己出生前就已消失的东西。