A new report by Deep Science Ventures and The Mark Leonard Trust, Hollow Harvests (opens in a new tab), finds that as crops have been bred and grown for higher yields, their nutrient density has fallen. For some nutrients, the drop is roughly 20 to 50% in cereals and vegetables.
Rothamsted Research's Broadbalk Experiment, which has grown wheat on the same field since 1843, shows the same trend. A UK study of food-composition data found iron and copper in fruit and vegetables fell by around half between 1940 and 2019.
Fewer nutrients in each bite means eating more for the same nutrition, at a time when many people are eating less, including those on GLP-1 drugs for weight management, which cut food intake by 16 to 39%.
Where pollination comes in
The report doesn't look at pollination. Pollination won't reverse the mineral losses it describes, but the insects visiting a flower can shape the quality of the fruit that follows.
Researchers at the Natural Resources Institute (University of Greenwich) and Niab have shown this in strawberries. In their 2024 paper, Dr Katie James and colleagues, including Dr Sarah Arnold and Dr Steven Harte, ran two seasons of polytunnel and greenhouse trials comparing strawberries pollinated by bumblebees, by hoverflies, by both, and with insects kept out.
59%
of fruit was marketable with bumblebees and hoverflies together, against 33% with insects kept out.
With bumblebees alone, the difference wasn't statistically significant. Adding hoverflies made it so. The fruit also had 47% more vitamin C. In the polytunnels, adding hoverflies to bumblebees produced heavier berries than bumblebees alone.
Two pollinators fill each other's gaps
In the study, the two insects' visits followed different daily patterns. Our Lead Entomologist, Dr Dylan Hodgkiss, who has published on hoverfly pollination of strawberry, puts it this way:
Bumblebees and hoverflies overlap a lot, but they have different preferences: when they forage, in what conditions, and how they handle a flower. Together they fill gaps either would leave on its own.
Dr Dylan Hodgkiss, Lead Entomologist, Olombria
The right hoverfly species, introduced at the right time, also control pests:
- The adults pollinate the crop.
- Their larvae eat aphids.
Our part
We make that dependable in commercial polytunnels, glasshouses and vertical farms. We bring the whole system: native hoverflies, lures that bring them to the right part of the crop, and AI monitoring that turns what's happening in the tunnel into data growers can act on.
Growers keep their bees. We add the flies and the system that turns them into results.