Since the late 1990s, organic apples have been a permanent fixture in the product range of BayWa Obst LLC & Co. Under its own brand "Bio-Obst vom Bodensee" (Lake Constance organic fruit), the subsidiary of globally important pome fruit trader BayWa AG, Munich, markets organically produced fruit from the Lake Constance region.
As the first pome fruit marketer in Europe, BayWa Obst LLC & Co. has been certified according to the Biocyclical-Vegan guidelines since November last year. As a marketing partner of Württembergische Obstgenossenschaft Raiffeisen eG, this way BayWa supports its producers, who already work according to the Biocyclical-Vegan guidelines, in labelling their products with the corresponding seal of quality. In addition, the labelling increases the visibility of bio-cyclical-vegan products and thus offers orientation in purchasing decisions to the growing number of consumers who prefer plant-based nutrition.
Biocyclic-vegan cultivation is a vegan form of organic farming without commercial animal husbandry and without the use of inputs of animal origin. It is characterized by the use of purely vegetable preparations for fertilization and plant treatment as well as the systematic introduction of methods for consistent humus formation. The Biocyclic Vegan Guidelines have been adopted by IFOAM as a global vegan ecological standard in the IFOAM Family of Standards since 2017. The publisher and label organisation is the non-profit Adolf Hoops Society based in Berlin. The inspection and certification of the farms is carried out by CERES in cooperation with accredited EU organic inspection bodies.
Biocyclically-vegan certified apples from BayWa / Picture: BayWa AG
Biocyclical vegan products are conquering the markets
Products from bio-cyclical-vegan cultivation are currently already available from Germany (apples, plums, nuts), Greece (citrus fruits, kiwis, grapes, bananas, Hokkaido, Sharon fruit, ginger, vegetables, olives, olive oil), Cyprus (pomegranates, olive oil), Hungary (soybeans, sunflower seeds, baking wheat) and France (wine). Farms in Switzerland (field vegetables, soybeans) and the Netherlands (field vegetables) are in preparation for bio-cyclical-vegan certification.
From the 2019 harvest, apples from three farms from biocyclic-vegan cultivation are now available on the market for the first time. The farms are located at Lake Constance. The apples are stored, sorted and processed in line with market requirements at the BayWa Bio-Packing Station in Ravensburg, which is certified for bio-cyclic-vegan cultivation.
Concrete answers to modern challenges
"Our greatest concern is to continually and sustainably develop cultivation. The certification according to the Biocyclic-Vegan guidelines now makes our commitment visible to the outside world", says Stefan Geiger, Nessenbach, one of the three biocyclic-vegan apple producers at Lake Constance. Together with the production of Nikolaus Glocker, Tepfenhart, and Clemens Hund from Meckenbeuren, the first fruit-growing company in Germany to have relied on biocyclic-vegan agriculture since 2017, the three will produce around 1,500 tons of apples for the 2019 harvest.
In view of the socio-political relevance of the biocyclic-vegan approach and the urgent global problems in the fields of climate, resource protection, health, nutrition and animal ethics, to which biocyclic-vegan cultivation offers concrete answers, the support group that is active in the dissemination of biocyclic-vegan cultivation will be increasingly involved in educational work in the coming year, not least in order to address supporters and decision-makers who can identify with the goals of biocyclic-vegan cultivation.
Source: BayWa / VegConomist
For more information:
BayWa Obst GmbH & Co. KG
Raiffeisenstr. 1
D-88214 Ravensburg
Tel : +49 (0)751 808-234
Fax : +49 (0)751 808-232
info-obst@baywa.de
www.baywa.de/pflanzenbau_obst/obst/obsthandel/