Pollinators support the nutrition and income of vulnerable communities

Study sites Field work took place in ten smallholder farming villages (2,400–3,000 metres above sea level, temperate climate) in Jumla District, Nepal (Fig. 1 , Supplementary Fig. 2 and Supplementary Method 2 ). Jumla is a remote mountainous district, situated in the Karnali Province of western Nepal. Rates of poverty, food insecurity and malnutrition are very high in this region, and 80% of the population directly depends on smallholder agriculture 47 . The study populations are typical of many smallholder communities around the world (Supplementary Fig. 1 ) and are characterized by a heavy reliance on small (87 cm in height), whereas length (that is, lying down) was recorded for children under 2 years old or 75% of pollinator-dependent food consumption and >90% of farming income. Yield gaps were defined as the difference between the upper-95 percentile yield and the median yield across farms in our study region. We then assumed that a part of this yield gap (median of 24%) could be closed, drawing on data from a global study of comparable smallholder farms in Asia (including Nepal), Africa and Latin America that quantified the fraction of yield gaps attributable to insufficient pollination 36 . Notably, we only closed this pollination-related share of the yield gap, whereas the larger proportion caused by other agronomic constraints (for example, fertilizer, water and soil quality) was left unchanged. …