Almond Board announces seed grants to support pollinator health and biodiversity
Honey bees and native pollinators will find more forage in California’s almond orchards this spring as a result of the almond community’s five-point Pollinator Protection Plan. Announced one year ago by the Almond Board of California (ABC), this plan expands the industry’s long-standing commitment to researching, protecting and improving bee health.
One of the five tenets of the Pollinator Protection Plan—increasing floral diversity on farm—led the Almond Board to create and fund the Bee+ Scholarship program which provides grants to farmers to help offset the cost of planting forage and habitat in and around their orchards. This effort led to 135 new almond farmers joining Project Apis m.’s Seeds for Bees program and added pollinator habitat to 14,778 acres of almond orchards, a 22 percent increase to the footprint of almond pollinator habitat in the last year.