For the first time in years, locally grown apples and pears are available on Tesco shelves. The Orchard project seeks to reduce 197,000kgs of CO2 emissions each year.
Kevin McCann visits Tullyallen Orchard in Co Louth on a regular basis, inspecting leaves and fruitlets for scab, a highly dangerous fungus, and ensuring that everything is healthy and getting adequate sunlight. After all, apple and pear trees are a fragile species. It's one of the reasons Ireland imports almost 95% of its eating apples, often from as far away as Chile and New Zealand, where vast orchards thrive on fertile soil amid sunshine and low wages. Similarly, every pear sold in Irish supermarkets is grown somewhere else.
The McCanns have been planting classic Irish apple species like Bramley in their Armagh orchard since the 1960s. For the past 25 years, they have supplied these to retailers, most notably Tesco. Tesco will now carry Gala and Golden Delicious apples from the family's new orchard in Tullyallen, just north of Bettystown, as well as Conference and QTee pears.
According to Lorcan Bourke, Bord Bia's fresh produce and potato manager, apple and pear orchards are highly important in the fight against climate change since they absorb significant amounts of carbon dioxide.