Fewer Danish orchards offer pick your own apples

There are increasingly fewer places in Denmark where people can pick fresh apples themselves, DR reports. The decline in apple orchards has also reduced the number of places where consumers can buy fruit directly from growers.

At Lindved Frugt, a fruit orchard south of Odense, Lars Andersen grows more than 20 apple varieties, including Cox Orange, Boskoop and Mutzu. Customers have been able to choose and pick their own apples there for 26 years.

“There used to be much more competition and many more small orchards around, but many have simply closed because there was not enough turnover,” Andersen said. “The orchards that remain have become larger and more efficient.”

Statistics Denmark says apple production has fallen by 80 per cent over the past 40 years. There are no specific figures for farm shops and pick-your-own orchards, but less fruit is being grown overall and fewer hectares are being used for fruit cultivation.

Judith Kyst, director of Madkulturen, a self-governing institution under the Ministry of Business that works to strengthen food culture, said the decline had made it harder to choose and pick fruit directly from a local grower.

Pick-your-own orchards cannot reverse the sharp fall in Danish fruit and vegetable production, Kyst said, but they can connect the people who grow food with those who eat it.

“A farm shop or a pick-your-own orchard shows that real people are behind the products we buy in supermarkets,” she said.

The Discovery variety is now ready to pick, marking the start of the apple season at Lindved Frugt this week. Andersen said he hoped Denmark would continue its tradition of producing high-quality fruit.