The writer and environmental campaigner George Monbiot wrote a piece in the Guardian about the plight of the English apple which was also put out as a short film on BBC2 Newsnight last Tuesday on the 9th of November. With George's permission I have put a link to the article on Guardian unlimited.  I don't often read the Guardian, (or indeed any newspaper apart from the British Medical Journal, The Fruit Grower and Private Eye) several customers mentioned it to me at a Winchester farmer's market and one kindly sent me the article in exchange for a bag of Kidd's Orange Red apples.

The article touches on the beauty and worth of our great English apple heritage, the benefits of low foods miles agriculture, the monstrousness of the supermarket food hegemony, the tragedy of the 'global' apple-grown for its ability to withstand mechanical handling and extended refrigerated storage, uniformity and 'crunch' (b*****s to the flavour!?!) gives a sad and touching example of an old fruit nursery JC Allgrove Ltd which has sunk into decline, irreplaceable old apples on the point of extinction, or even beyond it, and EU subsidy madness providing perverse incentives for English growers to cut down and burn their orchards. There is also an inflammatory  interview with the marvellous Julian Temperley which is well worth reading.

As I wrote to Mr Monbiot, I made a number of similar points in my essay on English Fruit growing a couple of years ago. I noted with great pride that of all the apples he singled out for special praise, Pitmaston Pineapple came close to the top, one of the exotically flavoured rare old fruits we grow a few of, mainly for our own use and exhibition purposes, to graft from and to put a few like little golden sweeties in our mixed apple boxes. If we sold it by the kilo it ought to be £6 a kilo as it is such a light cropper. George says he has taken on an allotment and proposes to grow some rare old English varieties including the Pineapple and that truly magnificent old source of  apple genetics, Ribston Pippin (parent of Cox's Orange Pippin and many others, grandparent to a quarter of my favourite apples).

Go thou and do likewise!

to read the article 'Fallen fruit' click on http://www.guardian.co.uk/weekend/story/0,,1337961,00.html  

or if that doesn't get you there Google on the words George Monbiot apples

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