Economic Value of Pollination Service of Agricultural Crops in Ethiopia: Biological Pollinators

The most important ecosystem service for sustainable crop production is pollination, the mutualistic interaction between plants and animals. Honeybees are being indispensable role in this process. The total economic value of crop pollination worldwide has been estimated at €153 billion annually. Animal pollination of agricultural crops is provided by both managed and wild pollinators. The aim of this study was to determine the economic value of pollination services and vulnerability of Ethiopian agriculture in the face of pollinator decline. An improved approach to determine the economic value of pollination (EVP) services is applied to multiply a crop’s total value by a coefficient between zero and one representing the crop’s dependency on pollination services for production. The potential production value loss due to lack of pollinators is also computed as the ratio of EVP to economic production value. Then EVP was $ 815.2 million dollars and vulnerability of Ethiopian agriculture due to lack of pollinators 16% in the 2015/16 crop production season. The regional state of Oromia benefited the most followed by the regional states of Amhara and South Nation Nationality People (SNPP). Coffee, the leading crop, has the highest EVP in the country followed by Faba beans and Nug (Guizotia abyssinica). Ethiopia has highly benefited from biological pollinators, so protecting them has significant role in the country’s economy. Most crops in Ethiopia have no pollination dependency ratio and some minor crop has no production data, incorporating them possible to better estimation of EVP service for the future.