The extent of our reliance on animal pollination for world crop production for human food has not
previously been evaluated and the previous estimates for countries or continents have seldom used primary
data. In this review, we expand the previous estimates using novel primary data from 200 countries and
found that fruit, vegetable or seed production from 87 of the leading global food crops is dependent upon
animal pollination, while 28 crops do not rely upon animal pollination. However, global production
volumes give a contrasting perspective, since 60% of global production comes from crops that do not
depend on animal pollination, 35% from crops that depend on pollinators, and 5% are unevaluated. Using
all crops traded on the world market and setting aside crops that are solely passively self-pollinated, wind-
pollinated or parthenocarpic, we then evaluated the level of dependence on animal-mediated pollination
for crops that are directly consumed by humans. We found that pollinators are essential for 13 crops,
production is highly pollinator dependent for 30, moderately for 27, slightly for 21, unimportant for 7, and
is of unknown significance for the remaining 9. We further evaluated whether local and landscape-wide
management for natural pollination services could help to sustain crop diversity and production. Case
studies for nine crops on four continents revealed that agricultural intensification jeopardizes wild bee
communities and their stabilizing effect on pollination services at the landscape scale