Fruit and vegetable growers broadly recognize the ecological and economic importance of pollinators; however, they often lack credible, regionally specific, and discoverable guidance to support on-farm decision-making. To better understand these limitations, we explored two central questions for growers in the U.S. Midwest: (1) To what extent do pollinator-related resources exist for specialty crops? and (2) How accessible are these resources to the farming community and other end users?
A digital scoping review of 1,023 pollinator-related resources, including scientific peer-reviewed articles, non-profit organization literature, and institutional websites was conducted in 2024-2025. This analysis revealed substantial information gaps in crop coverage, regional representation, and best management practices. Next, we applied a weighted rubric grounded in common data principles to evaluate each resource’s reachability, metadata quality, search-engine visibility, indexing, and shareability. The results showed considerable variability across resource type and criteria: scientific articles demonstrated strong metadata structure and discoverability but restricted access due to paywalls, whereas non-profit, educational, and government resources were openly accessible but suffered from poor metadata and low digital visibility.
Together, these findings underscore a persistent paradox in pollination information systems and their ecological implications: the most rigorously structured resources are often the least reachable, while the most reachable and accessible are insufficient or difficult to locate. Our study highlights the need for more geographically relevant, crop-specific pollinator guidance, as well as improvements in metadata standards and long-term hosting infrastructure to ensure information is findable, accessible, and usable for growers and technical advisors.