According to the president of the National Farmers’ Union, Minette Batters, many UK growers are ripping up their orchards because they are unable to afford to keep them. The increasing cost of labor and spiraling energy costs have meant fruit growers are removing trees from their land, Ms Batters said.
“This year there was a massive contraction for people not wanting to plant the orchards and ripping out old orchards because we wasted £60m worth of profit last year in the first six months of this year. So we’ve got to have a major reset if we are going to continue to grow this incredibly important sector and we’re not going to have food shortages off the back of it.”
Batters said the loss of the fruit trees was disastrous for biodiversity. “We want to see more orchards, but if you are there with an orchard that you haven’t been able to harvest the apples from, what are you meant to do? “We should be really encouraging buying British apples and pears and growing more of it here.”
Source: theguardian.com