Agriculture and Apple Orcharding

Horticulture

Horticulture is a subdivision of agriculture. High value crops such as fruit, vegetables and flowers are grown. The location of diverse horticultural farms depends to a large extent on environmental, climatic and soil conditions. In Britain, for example, apple orcharding is prevalent in Herefordshire, Kent, Somerset and Devon, because apple trees need warmth during the blossom period and to be sheltered from excessive wind and in particular from frost which kills the flowers and therefore fruit.

Commercial Horticulture is

• labour and capital intensive
• reliant on high-value crops
• reliant on advanced technology and expensive machinery

An orchard is a simplified ecosystem, but unlike a natural ecosystem in that

• only one crop (apples) is grown
• the orchard is not self-sustaining and nutrients are removed with the apple harvest.

Sustainability: One advantage of orcharding is that the trees absorb and convert  carbon dioxide. However, the mechanised processes of modern orcharding also contribute green house gases.

click here to read about the Carbon Footprint of Orcharding.

Farming is a system of Inputs, Processes and Outputs. These can be summarized in a system’s diagram.

Cider Apple Farming System’s Diagram:

Pectin is one of the “outputs”. When apples are crushed the skins etc. form a residue. This is called pomace.  A small amount of the pomace is collected by farmers and fed directly to their cattle (in small amounts). The bulk of the pomace goes to the pectin factory where it is dried and reduced further, undergoes various processes and finally becomes pectin which is used to make jams, sweets and other confectionary. At the end of the pectin making process you are left with a sludge, a tiny percentage of the original fruit. This is mixed with molasses and fed to cattle. Cider manufacturers are quite proud of the fact that most apple waste is recycled.

machine for picking apples

Farming Intensity

There are three main types of cider apple orcharding enterprises, all intensive:

1.            Large commercial growers:

·   Specialist growers

·   Large areas of land under cultivation

·   Spacing and size of trees to allow for mechanical picking

·   Heavily mechanized, low labour costs

·   High input of agro-chemicals

·   Highly efficient management based on scientific and business principles

·   Entire crop sold to large cider producers

·   Economy of scale – bulk buying of chemicals etc.

2.            Orchard is part of mixed farm:

·   Income is based on a variety of produce and/or animal products

·   Less risk if there is a bad crop one year

·   Orcharding methods traditional, involving more manual labour

·   Approach often less scientific, some use of agro-chemicals

·   Smaller orchards with fewer trees

·   Sometimes cider is produced for own consumption

·   Diversification into farm shops and/or tourism

·   Orchards used for grazing or other crops under the apple trees

·   Lower yields than large commercial orchards

3.            Organic Orchards:

·   Restricted use of agro-chemicals

·   Labour intensive

·   Specialist expertise based on organic farming principles

·   Capital intensive

·   Crop sold to specialist producers and outlets

·   Lower yields than non – organic commercial orchards

·   Supportive of bio-diversity

·   Possibility of producing own organic cider

Historically virtually every apple producer fell into the second category of mixed farming, but since WWII there has been demand for more apples and commercial enterprises have responded to that demand. More recently there has also been demand for organic apples and cider.

EU farming policies and directives apply to all types of apple growing enterprises. However, there are few subsidies, if any, for orchards. The Countryside Stewardship grants are available for traditional orchards, the ones that allow animals to graze under the apple trees.

All growers wishing to sell cider apples also have to take transport costs into account for bringing their fruit to the cider manufacturing factories.  Not surprisingly most cider manufacturers are located in apple growing areas. [Think about how this has affected settlement patterns over the years. The cider industry used to be more labour intensive and annually migrant workers (Roma and Irish mainly, but also some Londoners would join in the harvest as a kind of working holiday) would flood into the countryside to pick apples and work on the presses. ]

Market forces have impacted on orcharding as on all areas of agriculture. The development from small scale to large scale apple orcharding has been documented by the Apples and Pears Past Oral History Project. Several people who have worked in the cider industry, often for a great number of years, were questioned about the changes in farming practises.

Interview with Cedric Olive, Master Cider Maker, Bulmers, who talks about the changing methods of cider apple procurement in the factory:

“If you had an apple tree in your back garden, we’d buy the apples. We used to have probably 2000 suppliers or something like that. Ridiculous! And they were coming in, in the boots of cars, a couple of sacks and a little trailer on, all that sort of thing. Most of it when I first started, well 90% of it when it came in was all in sacks and bags, was all man-handled in. That suddenly changed over to bulk deliveries and of course we had to alter all the canal reception areas then into tipping areas and conveyors, and all that had to change.”

master cider maker Cedric Olive

Not surprisingly Bulmers is the largest cider manufacturer in the world.

To find out more about orcharding from the viewpoint of people involved in horticulture, read the articles linked from the Apples and Pears Past Home Page.

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