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Small but Mighty: Why Bees Matter to Nature (and Farming)

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At Earthmade, we believe the smallest forces in nature often make the biggest impact. Just like the beneficial bacteria we use to restore soil, bees are tiny powerhouses that keep ecosystems, and agriculture, alive and thriving.

The Role of Bees in Nature

Bees are among the most important pollinators on the planet. As they move from flower to flower collecting nectar, they transfer pollen, enabling plants to reproduce.

This process supports:

  • Over 75% of flowering plants
  • A significant portion of global food crops
  • Biodiversity across entire ecosystems

Without bees, many fruits, vegetables, and nuts simply wouldn’t exist.

Bees and Agriculture

For farmers, bees are essential partners. Crops like strawberries, almonds, blueberries, and cucumbers depend heavily on pollination to produce healthy yields.

When bee populations are strong:

  • Crop yields improve
  • Fruit quality increases
  • Ecosystems remain balanced

When they decline, the entire food system feels the impact.

A Shared Mission: Working With Nature

Bees and Earthmade share a common purpose: supporting life naturally.

Just as bees pollinate crops without harming ecosystems, Earthmade works to restore soil biology using beneficial microbes, reducing the need for synthetic chemicals that can disrupt natural systems.

Healthy soil supports healthy plants. Healthy plants support pollinators. And pollinators sustain the cycle of life.

Protecting Pollinators Starts in the Soil

One of the biggest threats to bees is habitat loss and chemical exposure. By shifting toward regenerative practices, farmers can create environments where pollinators thrive.

At Earthmade, we support this by:

  • Reducing reliance on harmful inputs
  • Encouraging biodiversity in and around fields
  • Promoting soil systems that naturally support plant health

Because when we protect bees, we protect everything they touch.

Bees may be small, but their impact is enormous. And just like soil biology, their work reminds us that nature already has the answers, we just have to support it.

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Mike Dobbins

CEO, Vicentia

Mike Dobbins is developing bio inputs to replace pesticides, herbicides and chemical fertilizers. His mission is to give farmers the tools they need to produce 100% chemical free food at the scale needed to feed the 9.8 billion people that will soon inhabit the earth. “If you want to look after biodiversity, and you want to improve our soil health, and you want to improve our chronic illness growth, we have to have NO chemicals. And in all fairness there has not been, on a worldwide basis, a solution to the problem.

 
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Walmart

A few years ago, Walmart embarked on a journey to become a regenerative company, dedicated to placing nature and humanity at the center of their business. As part of their commitment, they recently partnered with GEM Pack Berries, and will be distributing the first crops ever to be grown using an innovative cultivation method that eliminates the need for pesticides and soil-damaging heavy metals… game-changing strawberries from Earthmade. In keeping with environmentally friendly practices aimed at minimizing transportation distances, Earthmade strawberries are available in select Walmart locations in Southern California’s Ventura County.
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Duda Farm Fresh Foods

The Duda family has been growing fresh fruits and vegetables for nearly 100 years. It all started with Andrew Duda, who had just 40 acres of farmland, and his sights set on the American Dream. Now, six generations later, the Duda family continues this legacy by bringing their farm-fresh products to a restaurant or grocery store near you and ultimately, your kitchen table. Among their responsible farming practices, Duda has graciously partnered with Earthmade in running chemical-free farming trials on celery.
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Gath Farms

Gath Farms has a strong foundation of four generations dedicated to the land. They base their business on relationships, and understand the importance of face-to-face business practices built on honesty and integrity. Working together to build and grow their own successful farming operation provides the foundation upon which they can help others grow their operations, increase their profits and protect the land for generations to come. Gath Farms has partnered with Earthmade to run trials of chemical-free farming on commodities such as corn and soybeans.
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GEM Pack Berries

With an eye on the future, an ace coalition of California farmers known as GEM Pack Berries long ago embraced the organic farming practices standardized in the late 1980s. When they banded together in 2015, they wanted to find even more sustainable, soil friendly methods. They soon partnered with Vicentia, which was conducting innovative research on developing a special kind of good bacteria as a substitute to both artificial and heavy metal-based pesticides. GEM Pack understood that, if Vicentia scientists were successful, their advancements could solve a long list of health, agricultural, sustainability, and environmental issues. GEM Pack allocated a sizable plot of farming land so Vicentia bioscientists could conduct multi-year research on the cultivation of multiple commodities.
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Vicentia

Australian bioscience company Vicentia’s bio inputs have not only protected crops all around the world from pests that prey on them; they also eliminated the need for heavy metals, which have been found to affect the biofertility of the soil. Better yet, these revolutionary innovations could be adopted by farmers everywhere to grow all varieties of crops, thereby potentially transforming currently problematic farming practices into healthy, earth regenerating, sustainable practices. Vicentia’s groundbreaking solution also lowered production costs while maintaining or increasing yield and crop quality. Today, Vicentia’s regenerative agricultural advances are being trialed in seven countries.
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Howard Shapiro

Professor

Howard Shapiro has made it his life mission to understand the health of our plant. He has been involved with sustainable agricultural and agroforestry systems, pattern recognition, plant breeding, molecular biology and genetics for over 40 years. He has worked with indigenous communities, NGO’s, governmental agencies and the private sector around the world. A former university professor for 15 years, Fulbright Scholar, Ford Foundation Fellow, Fellow of the World Agroforestry Center, Chairperson of the External Advisory Board of the Agriculture Sustainability Institute at UC Davis, and numerous additional accolades, Shapiro has certainly proved he has the experience and vast knowledge of the very critical status of the world’s agricultural crisis.
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Mark Gath

Owner, Gath Farms

Mark Gath is the owner of Gath Farms, and comes from a multi-generational line of mid-western farmers and growers. As a cancer survivor (brought on by years of chemical-reliant farming), Gath has been a champion of non-chemical farming and agriculture practices. He enthusiastically grows chemical-free corn on his Arizona farm, andis running chemical-free trials of soybeans on his mid-west farms.
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Carlos Meza

Bioscientist, Vicentia Farmer

Carlos is an organic farmer and bioscientist hailing from Chile, where he was one of the first certified organic exporters in the 1990s. Disturbed by the amount of chemicals that are still widely used in certified organic systems, he’s developing fully biological alternatives to chemical pesticides and herbicides. These bio inputs harness the power of naturally occurring microbes to naturally control pests. Carlos’ vision is to remove all chemicals and heavy metals from conventional and organic farming systems.
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A.G. Kawamura

Owner, Orange County Produce, LLC

A.G. Kawamura is the former Secretary of the California Department of Food and Agriculture. He is a third generation fruit and vegetable grower from Orange County. He is co-chair of Solutions From the Land, a non-profit organization that collaborates with farmers, ranchers, foresters and stakeholders to implement climate smart land management practices and strategies.
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Mike Etchandy

Owner, Etchandy Farms Co-Owner, GEM-Pack Berries

Mike Etchandy is a fourth generation organic and conventional Orange County strawberry farmer. Jaded by the ambiguous organic certification system and the heavy metals it relies on, he has been testing new bio inputs on his strawberry fields to reduce his dependence on harmful chemicals.