Fruit farming is the branch of agriculture that deals with the science, art and business of cultivating, processing and marketing of fruits and fruit products, mostly for human consumption. Many fruits are commercially valuable as human and animal food, being eaten fresh and processed (manufactured foods, alcoholic and non-alcoholic beverages and other products such as vinegar and food additives).
Fruit consumption is vital for human nutrition, yet due to climate change, fruit production is threatened globally. Any negative impacts perceived on fruit production must be pro-actively addressed because without adaptation, production losses are inevitable. Impacts observed in fruit orchards and plantations are varied but will include changes connected with flowering times, fruiting times, crop quantity (quality), water-logging, drought, frost, pollinator interaction and populations, pests and disease, changes to pruning and watering regimes and so on.
Different fruit trees are affected to different extents, and this applies to both indigenous and exotic fruit trees. The increase in atmospheric and soil temperatures will have both negative and positive effects, yet the increased levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere may be good for tree growth. This growth rate gain due to climate change may be overshadowed however, by other negative impacts, such as the shortage of water and the emergence of new diseases and pests-which, being crop and region-specific, subsequently will result in increased costs of production for them to be addressed in the short-term and remain profitable while only producing fruit.
Planting fruit forests will to address the issue of greenhouse gas emission will serve to lock-up carbon, modify the micro-climates in which the orchards are located and provide nutrition for humans.
You will find on this site, various fruits grown in Zimbabwe, as well as many other parts of the world for purposes of feeding both people and animals, including use in many other branches of commerce and industry like medicine and chemical manufacturing.
The OneAcre current crop list of fruit types consists of
You will find grower instructional manuals on these fruits as well as their mechanisation, processing, packing and marketing under variable climatic conditions.
It is advisable to integrate fruit farming with other farming enterprises, such as vegetables or livestock to set up a viable and profitable farming enterprise, so that the costs and time-frames required for transition to full climate-smart agriculture may be addressed without the business folding up.
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