IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/oup/ajagec/v69y1987i1p56-63..html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Bee Pollination and Productivity Growth: The Case of Alfalfa

Author

Listed:
  • Alan L. Olmstead
  • Donald B. Wooten

Abstract

The spread of commercial pollination has received little attention in the literature analyzing the growth in U.S. agricultural productivity. Between World War I and 1960, growers of most fruits, nuts, and seeds came to realize that intensive bee pollination was essential to achieve high yields. Alfalfa seed growers were among the last groups to adopt commercial pollination. This article examines the dramatic impact that concentrating bees in alfalfa seed fields had on yields, which resulted in the restructuring of the alfalfa industry (the fourth most valuable commodity grown in the United States) in the 1950s.

Suggested Citation

  • Alan L. Olmstead & Donald B. Wooten, 1987. "Bee Pollination and Productivity Growth: The Case of Alfalfa," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 69(1), pages 56-63.
    • Handle: RePEc:oup:ajagec:v:69:y:1987:i:1:p:56-63.
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.2307/1241306
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Gallai, Nicola & Salles, Jean-Michel & Settele, Josef & Vaissière, Bernard E., 2009. "Economic valuation of the vulnerability of world agriculture confronted with pollinator decline," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 68(3), pages 810-821, January.
    2. Muth, Mary K & Rucker, Randal R & Thurman, Walter N & Chuang, Ching-Ta, 2003. "The Fable of the Bees Revisited: Causes and Consequences of the U.S. Honey Program," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 46(2), pages 479-516, October.
    3. Rucker, Randal R. & Thurman, Walter N. & Burgett, Michael, 2001. "An Empirical Analysis Of Honeybee Pollination Markets," 2001 Annual meeting, August 5-8, Chicago, IL 20547, American Agricultural Economics Association (New Name 2008: Agricultural and Applied Economics Association).
    4. Kitti, Mitri & Heikkila, Jaakko & Huhtala, Anni, 2006. "Fair policies for the coffee trade - protecting people or biodiversity?," Discussion Papers 11858, MTT Agrifood Research Finland.
    5. Elodie Bertrand, 2011. "What do cattle and bees tell us about the Coase theorem?," European Journal of Law and Economics, Springer, vol. 31(1), pages 39-62, February.
    6. Ferrier, Peyton M & Rucker, Randal R. & Thurman, Walter N. & Burgett, Michael, 2018. "Economic Effects and Responses to Changes in Honey Bee Health," Economic Research Report 276245, United States Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service.
    7. Vesa Kanniainen & Tuula Lehtonen & Ilkka Mellin, 2013. "Honeybee Economics - Implications for Ecology Policy," CESifo Working Paper Series 4204, CESifo.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:oup:ajagec:v:69:y:1987:i:1:p:56-63.. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Oxford University Press (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/aaeaaea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.