EDEKA and WWF: a more sustainable orange for Christmas

For many people all over the world, oranges at Christmas are an age-old tradition. At the moment, the German supermarket EDEKA sells oranges grown on an agricultural project in Andalusia, Spain. This agricultural project started in 2015 and is in cooperation with the WWF. In the conventional, but increasingly more sustainable, cultivation of the citrus fruit, the use of crop protection products is reduced, the biodiversity is stimulated, and the use of water is reduced. This is positive news for German consumers, as they consume at least 6 kilos per person per year of this popular fruit.

Since the beginning of the project, the use of crop protection products per hectare, at the farm Finca Iberesparragal, has been reduced with 89%. With this project EDEKA takes an important step in preventing the widespread death of insects. Instead of chemicals, biological pest control agents are used, for instance coccinella against aphids.

The Spanish WWF supports the analysis and reduction of the water use at the Finca, for example with drip irrigation. The integrated concept takes the entire region into account and has the objective of fairly distributing water resources and using water in a sustainable manner. This concept contributes to preserving Andalusia’s nature as a whole and the Coto de Doñana National Park, a refuge for endangered species, in particular. Other farms, in addition to Finca Iberesparragal where the pilot started, also participate in the joint project of EDEKA and WWF.

The oranges are labelled with the WWF-Panda and additional information about the project. So customers can easily recognize that these citrus fruit are conventionally but more sustainably cultivated. For more information and a video about this project: www.edeka.de/orange and www.edeka-verbund.de/projekt-zitrus

Source: Edeka-Verbund /ots