Price war: My fields flooded by apples

The crackle crunchy between the teeth, when you take a bite, and it spreads a sweet taste of late summer in your mouth. The apples taste as they should. Yet they are now on the ground and rotting.

the Apples belong to the 78-year-old small citrus farmer Finn Brix Mikkelsen from Simested in denmark. He has cared for the earth, cared for the 23.000 trees that stand around on the farm, and picked up his part of the 250 tonnes of apples, the harvest gave last year.

- Well, it is not fun to look at, but I would rather plow them down out here on the field than to see that they stand in the boxes and rot, he says, while he looks out over his wasteland, which now is sprinkled with apples.

- They cost me four dollars kiloet, and I would certainly not count on, how many thousand dollars that is for the here, says Finn. Photo: René Schütze

- I have never worked with anything other than fruit. I went to learn at an orchard in 1956.

the Finn has over the years learned to take the sour with the sweet, but it pains him anyway, that this year has been so hard to sell Danish apples.

- If only there was someone who wanted to buy them.

But it is not there. At least not for the price it costs him to grow apples and get them picked up.

- People think apparently only at the price when they stand in the grocery store. And to the foreign apples last longer, but the Danish are not sprayed with all the stuff they have down south.

He sees no other way than to discard the 18,000 tonnes of Elstar apples, he can't get rid of.

- It is a terrible waste of food, sugar he.

Anyway, it does not come on talk to put a remedy and a ’free’sign up by the road.

- No, you know what, if people want my apples, so they can come in here and buy them. If at first I start to give them away, so people will not give money for them in the future.

Finn continues to cultivate his beloved apples, too, though he has passed retirement age. Photo: René Schütze

Although there are vintage 1940 on My birth certificate, thinking he is still on the frugtplantagens future.

- Yes, yes, I go on pension. When I get 100, he laughs, he in a jiffy lifts a crate of apples more up on the tractor and unloading them on the field.

the Rain pouring down, and frugtavleren stops soon to throw apples out, there are a few lucky asener, who can put mulerne in free apples.

- the Rest get my neighbor. He has 70 cows, which eat them with the greatest pleasure.

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the Merchant: Customers looking at dollars and cents

In the local Rema 1000 in Aalestrup sells the largest number of foreign apples, even though they also have Danish fruits on the shelves. Approximately two-thirds of the apples are rolling through the checkout and home in the customer's refrigerator, is picked up south of the border, assess the secretary.

Mikkel Nygaard has worked in Rema 1000 in Aalestrup in ten years, and he is not in doubt: the Customers in his store eat the largest number of foreign apples. Photo: René Schütze

- most of The looking at, what is nicer and cheaper, and it is often the price that determines it, explains Mikkel Nygaard Pedersen, 27, who is the deputy head of the shop.

- But we also have clients who are looking at where products come from - especially the elderly. There must be Danish, cost what it will.

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the Children provides

Price, country of origin, taste, appearance, organic or not. There can be many things that come into play when dagligvarerne smoking in the shopping cart and it of course also applies to fruit and vegetables. Ekstra Bladet has asked customers in Rema 1000 in a rural environment, what they are looking at when they buy apples.

- unfortunately, There is only one kind of apples, my children bother to eat. It is the Pink Lady, and they do not come from Denmark. I'm going to have to give me, for they are 12 and 15 years old and have their own opinion, so right here determines the children.

I see what is on offer, but it is also not apples, we eat the most of. It is pears and then oranges, mandarins, bananas and such things, and they come not from Denmark.

- I don't even know where the apples are from, say Ole, while he put Italian apples in the bag.

- I am probably the most for them, I think looks good.

- I buy first and foremost Danish, and organic if I can't get it. I would like to avoid all the sprøjtehalløj. This means, of course, also anything with the price, but then we save on something else.