Operationalizing Farm Sustainability, Particularities From the Beekeeping Sector

Abstract

The activity of beekeeping is essential not only for agricultural production, but also for mankind. Even though beekeeping has been producing honey and other bee products for thousands of years, it is still quite poorly understood and analysed as a professional activity. In light of the challenges facing the sector today, integrating sustainability into beekeeping practices becomes not only optional, but necessary. In recent years, the concept of sustainability has received increasing attention in debates on agricultural policies, and stakeholders have become more and more interested in monitoring and evaluating agricultural practices. Still, assessing sustainability involves "breaking" its dimensions into various factors using indicators that provide information. This can often prove to be difficult to operationalize. Nevertheless, the matter of operationalizing sustainability was approached through different models which have led to numerous proposals for measuring and evaluating sustainability in the agricultural sector. However, despite the similarities, the beekeeping sub-sector is distinguished from the agricultural one by a number of characteristics which obviously need to be included in the models for assessing sustainable development. Therefore, this paper aims to consider the multitude of economic, social, environmental and governance particularities of Romanian beekeeping farms based on literature, and bring them forward through a bee farm sustainability assessment model.

A New Approach to Inform Restoration and Management Decisions for Sustainable Apiculture

“…However, the sustainability of the Australian and global apicultural industries continues to be questioned [3][4][5][6][7]. This includes the industry's ability to meet growing demands for pollination services [8], honey, and other bee products in the future [9]. Currently, global stocks of managed honey bees are growing too slowly (~45% increase) to match the rapid growth (300% increase) in the fraction of agriculture dependent on pollination by animals [8], and a shortage of managed honey bees has been reported for a number of countries [10].…”