Crops, browse and pollinators in Africa

Pollination is an ecosystem service that is key to food security. Pollinators are essential for many fruit and vegetable crops. In agriculture, especially amongst pollen-limited crops, promoting pollination services is a means of increasing productivity without resorting to expensive agricultural inputs of pesticides or herbicides. As wild ecosystems are increasingly converted to more human-dominated uses to meet the compelling demand of food security, it is critical for us to understand what pollination services are most important for food security, and how we can preserve pollinator services in sustainable farming systems. FAO, through the FAO/Netherlands Partnership Programme, supported an initial stock-taking of pollinator-dependent crops and browse plants in Africa, presented in this document