ABSTRACT
Pollinators, particularly bees, are one of nature's valuable productive assets and their labor is considered an important factor for the production of commodity crops and forage. This contribution to human well-being has led the scientific community to consider pollination services one of the seventeen most important ecosystem services that have a positive impact on human well-being. The stocking rate framework makes it clear that pollination is one of many inputs into the production of a crop and as such it looks at only the value-added produced by that specific input, as measured by how much farmers are willing to pay for that input. An ecological pollination service is a function of natural capital, and its flow depends on the size and the state of this capital, whereas a commercial pollination service is a function of human and manufactured capital. The most common ecosystem structures that are repeatedly mentioned in the pollination valuation literature are agro-ecosystems and agro-forestry.
