The lower mean yield of organic farming compared with conventional agriculture raises questions about its economic viability. However, its relatively mild impact on insect populations, combined with bottom-up benefits of organic soil amendments, may strengthen plant-pollinator interactions and enhance pollination services. Because pollination often limits the yield of most pollinator-dependent crops, high-quality pollination services could mitigate the yield drawbacks commonly associated with organic farming practices. Using a dataset comprising 1372 individual records from 199 studies and 61 crop species, we conducted a meta-analysis to test whether the yield gap between conventional and organic agriculture decreases with increasing crop pollinator dependence. We explicitly accounted for two potential confounding factors-climatic zone of crop origin and crop growth form-and implicitly for additional phylogenetically structured traits. We found that the yield gap narrows with increasing pollinator dependence, becoming negligible for crops with moderate to high reliance on pollinators. This relationship remained robust after controlling for confounding factors and publication bias. Our findings suggest that organic management may be preferable for pollinator-dependent crops, often achieving yields comparable to conventional farming while reducing ecological costs. These results highlight the potential of pollinator-friendly practices to reconcile productivity and sustainability in agricultural systems.
Aizen et al. (Wed,) studied this question.