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I saw this article on HortWeek: Thatchers Cider plants 13,000 apple trees in new Somerset orchard.
I made a mental wager to myself before reading it: I bet they exaggerate the environmental benefit side of the orchard.
Not because of anything about Thatchers Cider.
It’s because I think it’s nigh impossible to write a press release about rural industry without flexing, or stretching, the old environment creds.
Especially with our robot chums Chat GPT et al behind the pen.
Let’s begin the backseat demolition driving:
“The planting follows three years of regenerative farming to prepare the land for the new trees, ensuring top quality soil for the tastiest apples.”
Stop. Regenerative farming is by definition not intended to be a three-year process. It is a holistic, longer-than-life approach to agriculture.
It has short term business goals like any farm, while working towards long term landscape improvements that build fertile soil without depending on buying in chemical fertilisers.
Even granting them those three years, I can equally well say “the planting ended a mere three years of regenerative farming”.
Because no specifics are given, I’m reading three years of “regenerative farming” as “growing a fallow meadow of cover crops, possibly with livestock grazing”.
Which is lovely, but slightly oversold.
“Our orchards are not only places of cider production, but havens for biodiversity; from the bees that pollinate the trees to the worms that enrich the soil.”
Martin Thatcher, Quoted in a Press Release for Hortweek
I’ve never spoken to Martin, and I’ve seen how press releases work, so I am not assuming that Martin actually said that.
Let’s gut the absurd statement until there are only giblets left for our stew, seasoned with bay tree leaves from yesterday’s laurel crowns.
Havens for biodiversity claim, part 1
The best orchards for biodiversity are known as polycultures, mixed orchards that grow several fruit tree species, often with smaller shrubs and perennial crops in between them.
Stefan Sobkowiek is Canadian level handsome and charming, and happens to know a bit about polyculture orchards.
Thatchers are growing 13,000 trees, half Red Windsor, half Katy (neither of which are primarily cider apples, both are typically eating apples to a home grower).
A field of only one species, albeit with a slight variation between its halves, is the opposite of a biodiverse realm: it is the definition of a monoculture, which is how most farms are for efficiency.
Havens for biodiversity claim, part 2
Every field has a potentially biodiverse hedge around it, and in the HortWeek article, you can see there’s a hedge running through the field too.
On the one hand, top marks for them not simply removing the hedge.
On the other hand, after 3 years of “regenerative” farming, look at the gappy state of it:
Note that there is no 2-3 metre margin of meadow along the hedge, which would greatly increase its wildlife value.
The track runs along the hedge, and there are fruit trees right down to the track, squeezing nature out.
Even with such poor resolution, it’s clear that the hedge has not been laid in an age, and certainly not beefed up with a spot of replanting and perhaps some hedgerow trees.
All of which are top of the list for biodiversity improvements in this situation, where the rest of the field is either apples or grass.
Bees claim
Hive pics, or it didn’t happen.
All the points above count against ze beez too: a monoculture orchard offers a short feeding season, and the poorly maintained hedges have no meadow margin around them, nor any hedgerow trees to increase the wild bee habitat and forage.
Worms claim
In fairness, mulching an orchard this size with manure and/or woodchips might not be practical.
But that’s what it would take to say that they are running the farm in a way that seriously feeds soil life, to make up for how few animals live and poop in the field, and no build up of dead plant matter on the soil surface.
Most large orchards do not mulch, in which case those strips of bare soil are bad for worms and all soil life, and the strips of increasingly compacted grass between them are merely OK.
I’m done with the press release, time for a Thatchers
Thatchers is a great company, they have a community orchard project, they make cider, they are good for the rural economy, and I see this same “biodiverse credentials” stuff in press releases everywhere, as though they were legally required to come up something, anything, even the worms.
I will drink a Thatchers now because it tastes nice. That’s how I judge beverages, press releases don’t come into it.
