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Pome fruit produced according to a new standard: The first more sustainable apples and pears are currently being harvested.
Swiss fruit producers started harvesting a few days earlier than usual and are expecting good yields. For the first time, more than 85 percent of the pome fruit area was produced according to the new “Sustainability Fruits” industry program. This makes production more sustainable and protects the environment, the association said at its media conference in Fruthwilen, Thurgau.
Protection of plants, soil and water
The program with 90 measures includes sustainability goals such as plant protection, soil fertility and fertilization, biodiversity and water use. This program is a response to the increased demands of consumers, the market and politics. According to the association, efforts to produce fruit more sustainably are met with broad support.
We don’t want to create luxury goods.
A majority of the producers, but also the leading retailers, are behind the program, which “brings no new label to the market”, as the President of the Swiss Fruit Association, the Thurgau fruit grower Jürg Hess, emphasizes. It is based on the Suisse Guarantee label, which primarily guarantees Swiss cultivation. In addition, there is the new “Sustainability Fruits” standard, which allows farmers to do even more voluntarily.
Apples and pears, produced according to the “Sustainability Fruits” standard, will almost certainly be more expensive, says Urs Müller, consultant at the Thurgau Agricultural Center Arenenberg. Finally, the fruit growers receive an additional six centimes per kilogram of pome fruit from the traders for their additional work.
This will trigger a certain surge in inflation at the front.
How much of this additional price will be passed on to the customer is still open. “That will trigger a certain surge in inflation at the front,” says Urs Müller. And Jürg Hess says: “We don’t want to create a luxury good that individual consumers will soon no longer be able to afford.”
The farmers have grown tired of the many changes triggered by the agricultural policy. That is why Urs Müller sees the agreement on the new “Sustainability Fruits” standard as a great benefit for the fruit industry. It is the agreement on the 90 sustainability measures, of which the fruit farmers have to fulfill 30 this year. There should be ten more measures per year.
In order not to overwhelm the farmers, the association deliberately started with the implementation of the first 30 measures with the apples and pears, says association president Jürg Hess. Within two years, the industry standard will then also be extended to stone fruit, i.e. plums, apricots and cherries, and later to berries.