In perfect
harmony

Some estim­ate that the car­bon sequest­ra­tion in a cider apple orch­ard is in the range of 35 to 50 tonnes of carbon/hectare over a 25-year period.

The wide diversity of fruit vari­et­ies also ensures the sus­tain­ab­il­ity of the har­vests and a high res­ist­ance to cli­mate variations.

Orch­ards also offer bene­fits in terms of cre­at­ing hab­it­ats for liv­ing organ­isms. Their hori­zont­al and ver­tic­al struc­ture provides a diversity of hab­it­ats and resources to encour­age biod­iversity: shel­ter in winter, repro­duc­tion, food.

The apples are grown in the heart of the Nor­mandy boc­age, and sev­er­al spe­cies of birds, not­ably tits, thrive here. These birds act­ively con­trib­ute to the nat­ur­al pred­a­tion of cer­tain pests.

Obser­va­tion centres also show that there is a great­er pres­ence of earth­worms in an orch­ard than there is in a vine­yard, for example, due in par­tic­u­lar to the grass­ing of most of the plots. The soils are there­fore rich­er and bet­ter able to absorb the rainfall.

Pol­lin­a­tion is also fun­da­ment­al to the orch­ards’ pro­duc­tion mech­an­ics. The apple tree can­not pol­lin­ate itself and each orch­ard must there­fore rely on bees and oth­er pol­lin­at­ing insects to ensure the long-term viab­il­ity of its fruit harvest.

In spring, dur­ing the flower­ing peri­od, the Nor­mandy orch­ards are lit­er­ally buzz­ing with activity!

The orch­ards’ abil­ity to provide hab­it­ats for pol­lin­at­ors is estim­ated to be 4 times great­er than that of field crops, par­tic­u­larly cereals. 

In terms of water usage, irrig­a­tion is pro­hib­ited in the orch­ards and the water con­sumed in the mak­ing of Pommeau de Normandie remains fairly low.

A large volume of water is used for the wash­ing of the fruit, but this is very often in a closed circuit.

Lastly, orch­ards have vari­ous advant­ages when it comes to pre­serving the soil and com­batting erosion: strong, dur­able root sys­tems that enable a good fix­a­tion of the soil, per­man­ent grass cov­er in the rows and inter-row areas, little plough­ing of the soil, etc.

In France, water erosion is respons­ible for the loss of 1.5 tonnes / hec­tare of soil each year.

Wheth­er cer­ti­fied organ­ic or not, Pommeau de Normandie pro­duc­tion ensures a low level of phytosan­it­ary product use with mixed farm­ing ensur­ing that nat­ur­al fer­til­isa­tion takes place, thanks not­ably to the pres­ence of livestock.

The amount of lost fruit is rel­at­ively low through­out the pro­duc­tion chain: it is estim­ated to be less than 5%. The pro­du­cers are not bothered about the aes­thet­ics of the fruit (in terms of its shape, col­our or con­form­ity) and phytosan­it­ary products are there­fore not needed to con­trol these features.

Lastly, the pro­cessing of apples and pears pro­duces many by-products includ­ing pectins, anim­al feed, fer­til­isers or anaer­obic digestion.