Southern Hemisphere production of apples and pears are both forecast to rise by 2% year-on-year in 2019, but individual countries are expecting some significant increases and decreases.

New Zealand’s largest apple grower-exporter T&G Global has begun using a robotic harvester on a commercial apple crop in what it describes as a “world-first”.

The new apple season has not yet started in the northern hemisphere, but the market is already under pressure.

Thinking Local: The need for a varied South African diet.

Most European countries have a reasonable production, with Poland as a major exception, as the volumes there have dropped by no less than 40%.

South Africa's expectations for a good apple and pear season have been thrown into uncertainty due to the spread of COVID-19 around the world and the tumbling oil prices.

Some time ago, on the way home, I decided to buy an apple.

Most people reach into the supermarket fridge and pull out a bag of apples without much of thought. Where was it grown? How did it get from the tree into a bag? How did the bag end up on the shelf?

While the whole of agriculture trends toward automation technologies, the production operations of tree fruit crops still require a fair amount of manual labor.

For key wheat and apple production regions, the recent multi-year drought was the most severe in 30 years. This may be an early sign of the effects of climate change on agriculture in the winter rainfall area of the Western Cape. This according to a PhD study conducted by Dr Simone Theron, who recently received her doctoral degree from Stellenbosch University's Department of Horticultural Science in the Faculty of AgriSciences.

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