2026-05-27 · percent of leading crop types

Three-quarters of crop types need pollinators

Wind-pollinated staples feed calories — fruits, nuts, and coffee need bees and friends.

Three-quarters of leading crop types — fruits, nuts, and coffee among them — benefit from animal pollination. The wind- and self-pollinated quarter carries the calorie load through staples, while the variety on our plates leans on bees and friends. When pollinators decline, that colorful 75% is what's at stake.

1 cell = 0.1 percent of leading crop types (0.1% of crop types) · 1,000 cells

Context

The ~75% share comes from the IPBES Assessment on Pollinators, Pollination and Food Production, drawing on Klein et al.'s synthesis of the world's leading crops. It counts crop types that benefit from animal pollination — not the share of calories those crops provide.

The split is lopsided in practice: the 25% that manages without pollinators includes the staples that carry the world's calories, while the pollinator-dependent 75% spans fruits, nuts, coffee, and much of the variety in human diets. Within that 75%, dependence ranges from partial to essential — some crops need pollinators to set fruit at all, others simply yield more with them.

Klein et al. / IPBES: ~75% leading crop types benefit from animal pollination.