More biodiversity, greater production and better quality with multifunctional margins

Once a year, the German supermarket chain REWE organises an event attended by its customers, consumer organizations, the media and NGOs, to present projects on sustainability and social responsibility, to be developed by its suppliers.

Through this event, German consumers get the chance to find out that, when they buy Spanish fruit or vegetables, not only are they taking home something healthy, delicious and nutritious, but they are also helping to improve the sustainability of the planet, to increase the biodiversity, and to help various, positive social actions.

With this event, REWE becomes the first link in the food chain that connects directly with the producer. Thus, its Service Provider, Univeg Trade Spain, which is involved in the development of such sustainability projects, is working with partners like Syngenta to help develop them in the field, along with leading producers of fruits and vegetables, such as SAT Frutaria.

For Maria Fernanda Campa, director of the Quality Department at Univeg Trade Spain, a professional team will always go for this type of project. "Consumers in Germany and other countries in northern Europe are very knowledgeable and very demanding, not only when it comes to the quality of what they buy, but also with how it is produced and under what conditions.

Consumers are aware of the fact that they are contributing to a social good with their purchase (jobs and a legal workforce) and, furthermore, that the products they are buying have been grown while adhering to environmentally-friendly methods. Projects such as Operation Pollinator fit into our philosophy, because they give us that edge when working with distributors and consumers, and producers enjoy multiple benefits, such as biological control and improvements in their production and the fruit quality."

To learn about these benefits, we visited the Pichardo farm, in Aznalcazar, Seville; a holding of the company SAT Frutaria, with 86 hectares of plums, where two hectares of multifunctional margins have been planted.

For Maria Fernanda Campa, this is a clear example of collaboration in the entire agro-food chain. "Univeg Trade Spain had been looking for sustainability projects applicable to the productions, and found that Syngenta could supply a fantastic technical team with an understanding of all crops and fully focused on providing sustainable and effective responses to the producers. So, when we were presented with the Operation Pollinator project, based on promoting biodiversity with the use of multifunctional margins, we found it a very interesting idea and did not hesitate to implement it, together with our most advanced suppliers in their fields, both for open ground vegetables, as well as fruits and greenhouse areas. The results are showing us that it works."

José Teba is certain that Operation Pollinator is the right way to go, and if the results of this year's test are as positive as it seems they will be, it will be applied to all farms.

"The project was first proposed to us by our customer Univeg Trade Spain, while Syngenta has been the one responsible for selecting the mix of the most interesting flowering plant seeds for this area, as well as to track the development of the margins from the moment they were planted. We also have an entomologist, who is in charge of compiling detailed descriptions of the species present in this ecological niche. On the basis of what we have seen so far, we believe it is worth investing in these types of action and we'll probably apply them to the rest of the farm."

The success of this test of Operation Pollinator in plums could be an important boost for its implementation in Spain. There are already over 40 commercial sites with this type of margin across Spain. Frutaria is one of the most important fruit and vegetable producers at a national level, with 4 production areas in Andalusia, Extremadura, Aragon and Navarra. It also has 12,000 hectares of crops in 28 farms and 4 warehouses, and is exporting its own production to 43 countries from its commercial offices in Spain, the Netherlands and France. In total, Frutaria has an annual production of no less than 40,000 tonnes of stonefruit, 26,000 tonnes of citrus, 15,000 tonnes of pome fruit and 4,000 tonnes of table grapes.

The relationship between pollination and quality is one of the keys in fruit production, as scientific studies have shown in recent years. While a decade ago the trend was to create self-fertilising varieties that needed no pollinators, experts are now certain that a fruit tree pollinated by a solitary bee yields an exceptional quality.

Óscar Aguado, CSIC entomologist, and a researcher at the Biological Station of Doñana, explains that "a solitary bee has almost twenty times the pollinating efficiency of a social bee, such as the Apis mellifera, which are placed in hives. When it comes to cherries, plums and apples, scientific studies have already shown that the trees pollinated by solitary bees yield a greater number of fruits and, more importantly, each fruit has more weight, has a greater degree of sugar and has more fibre, protein and vitamins."

Based on the first analyses of the species found at Pichardo farm, Óscar Aguado has already reached some conclusions. "Solitary bees pollinating stonefruit tress are already to be seen. If we expand the multifunctional margins and install nest boxes for wild bees, the next pollination will be much better. Furthermore, we are finding many parasitoid insects or predators that help improve the pest/crop balance, so the benefit for the health of the fruit trees is quite considerable."

This appears to be a beneficial move for the entire chain, from the consumers, concerned about what they eat and how their food is produced, to distributors and their suppliers, who must strive to find a balance between quality, price and sustainability, and the supplier sector and its auxiliary industries, which need to respond to all these needs while making a profit to be able to continue moving forward.