The carbon footprint of top fruit is so low that growers should focus on the commercial benefits of carbon saving, rather than the environmental gains, according to Blackmoor Estate managing director William Wolmer.
He has done research into carbon footprinting by studying 100 hectares of top fruit and told delegates at Fruit Focus that horticulture’s greenhouse gas emissions are notably low.
Wolmer told a forum on the carbon footprint of orchards that agriculture accounted for 7.8 per cent of the UK’s greenhouse gas emissions, while fruit was just one per cent, which was actually less as a net result, as trees take carbon from the atmosphere.
According to Wolmer’s research, apples account for just 0.5kg of carbon equivalent per kilo. However, this could be more in cooking apples as the research did not consider the fruit’s whole life cycle, including possible energy emissions.
He said: “If you want to save the world, eat an apple - 25 per cent of all fresh produce is wasted so there’s an easy way to help save energy.
“Apples are a perennial crop so it is only if you are ploughing the crop each year that you are releasing carbon - land-use change tends to cause the biggest carbon release in agriculture.
“Carbon footprint tends to be quite a political term, but it is not particularly accurate as a measurement; it is a guesstimate, realistically.
“There are a lot of negatives in the impact of global warming - changes to the pests we have to deal with; heat droughts and sun scorch; root death; unpredictable summers; and changes to cropping patterns.
“But there will be longer autumns and therefore less carbon and more yield as well as quicker ripening, so there are positives for horticulture.
“Top fruit in particular has made significant efforts to reduce its carbon footprint and this suits the retailers very well.”
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