1. Climate Smart Fruit Production (CSAb)
Fruit is central ingredient to many popular sustainable food brands. Apples are one of the most widely consumed fruits in the world, and 84.6 million tonnes of apples are produced each year. EU demand for berry fruits like strawberries is much higher than supply. Danone and INRA are working with partners including IBIMET to produce new guidelines for climate smart fruit production, pest resistance, genomics and soil management. This pilot project in Italy focussed on optimising climate smart apple and strawberry fruit production and sourcing.
IMPACT: GHG mitigation, climate smart food production, increased productivity, pest resistance
STAGE: working with Climate-KIC flagship Climate Smart Agriculture Booster, the project reported key learnings in 2016
SCALE: initial stakeholder reach of 6,700 farmers in 48 cooperatives, managing 17,000 ha of horticulture, 91 processing plants and 1 million tonnes of fruit produce per year. Key learnings will be applied across EU fruit value chains and across Danone which aims to be a carbon neutral company by 2050.
The objective of this project is to perform a feasibility study to build a European project to implement a fruit sustainable sourcing strategy for strawberry suppliers and for apple suppliers. The ultimate goals are to define the agricultural practices adapted to each type of soil and climate and establish the guidelines that will allow for a climate smart and environment-friendly fruit production. The levers identified, through working groups on Apple and Strawberry, as key to ensure sustainable growing of these key fruits were:
Carbon
Soil quality
Water & Nutrients
Climate (air)
Phenology
Phyto-sanitary
Currently, scientific and corporate working groups are being set up to ensure timely progress of pilot projects and measurable outcomes as well as involving other corporate partner to support the project (Tesco, Pepsico, Innocent etc in discussion).