Pollinator conservation has become a key challenge to achieve sustainable agricultural landscapes and safeguard food supplies. Considering the potential negative effects of pollinator decline, international efforts have been developed to promote agri-environmental measures and pollinator-friendly management practices. However, little effort has been devoted to farmers’ perceptions and knowledge about pollinators, or to farmers’ role in enhancing pollination. We administered 376 face-to-face questionnaires in four areas of Spain with different dominant pollinator-dependent crops, to assess the factors behind farmers’ perceptions, knowledge, and practices adopted to promote pollination. Overall, 92.7% of the respondents recognized that pollinator insects are necessary for crop production, and 73.4% perceived pollinator decline in their farms. We found that farmers had moderate knowledge about pollinators (6.1 ± 1.8, on a 1–10 scale). The most applied practices to promote pollinators were reducing insecticide spraying (53.2% of respondents), diversifying crops (42.8%), and increasing fallow fields (39.1%). Factors such as education, age, concern about the pollinator crisis, and professional dedication to agriculture strongly influenced farmers’ knowledge and current application of pollinator-friendly practices. Implications of our results for the ongoing reform of the Common Agricultural Policy are discussed, highlighting the need to increase engagement and trust of farmers through communication and technical assistance.

Pollinator conservation has become a key challenge to achieve sustainable agricultural landscapes and safeguard food supplies. Considering the potential negative effects of pollinator decline, international efforts have been developed to promote agri-environmental measures and pollinator-friendly management practices. However, little effort has been devoted to farmers’ perceptions and knowledge about pollinators, or to farmers’ role in enhancing pollination. We administered 376 face-to-face questionnaires in four areas of Spain with different dominant pollinator-dependent crops, to assess the factors behind farmers’ perceptions, knowledge, and practices adopted to promote pollination. Overall, 92.7% of the respondents recognized that pollinator insects are necessary for crop production, and 73.4% perceived pollinator decline in their farms. We found that farmers had moderate knowledge about pollinators (6.1 ± 1.8, on a 1–10 scale). The most applied practices to promote pollinators were reducing insecticide spraying (53.2% of respondents), diversifying crops (42.8%), and increasing fallow fields (39.1%). Factors such as education, age, concern about the pollinator crisis, and professional dedication to agriculture strongly influenced farmers’ knowledge and current application of pollinator-friendly practices. Implications of our results for the ongoing reform of the Common Agricultural Policy are discussed, highlighting the need to increase engagement and trust of farmers through communication and technical assistance.

Mitigating pollinator declines in agriculturally dominated landscapes to safeguard pollination services requires the involvement of farmers and their willingness to adopt pollinator-friendly management. However, farmer knowledge, perceptions, and actions to support on-farm pollinators and their alignment with science-based knowledge and recommendations are rarely evaluated. To close this knowledge gap, we interviewed 560 farmers from 11 countries around the world, cultivating at least one of four widely grown pollinator-dependent crops (apple, avocado, kiwifruit, oilseed rape). We particularly focused on non-bee crop pollinators which, despite being important pollinators of many crops, received less research attention than bees. We found that farmers perceived bees to be more important pollinators than other flower-visiting insects. However, around 75% of the farmers acknowledged that non-bees contributed to the pollination of their crops, seeing them as additional pollinators rather than substitutes for bees. Despite farmers rating their own observations as being most important in how they perceived the contribution of different crop pollinator taxa, their perception aligned closely with results from available scientific studies across crops and countries. Farmer perceptions were also linked with their pollinator management practices, e.g. farmers who used managed bees for crop pollination services (more than half the farmers) rated these managed bees as particularly important. Interestingly, their willingness to establish wildflower strips or manage hedgerows to enhance pollinator visitation was linked to their ecological knowledge of non-bees or to government subsidies. Farmers adapted practices to enhance pollination services depending on the crop, which indicates an understanding of differences in the pollination ecology of crops. Almost half of the farmers had changed on-farm pollination management in the past 10 years and farm practices differed greatly between countries. This suggests integrated crop pollination measures are being adapted by farmers to reach best pollinator management practices. Our findings highlight the importance of studying local knowledge as a key to co-design locally-adapted measures to facilitate pollinator-integrated food production as ecological intensification tools.