We buy some of our strawberries from the south of Spain. Whilst this area has a great climate for growing berries, these little fruit can be rather thirsty, and the available water supply is being put under considerable stress from the combination of increased agricultural production and housing developments. Water supply in this area is particularly important given it's proximity to the Donana National Park - a key stopover wetland for 6 million migratory birds each year from Northern Europe to Southern Africa.

In 2009 we undertook a project to identify how climate change will impact the growing of the fruit that we use for our smoothies. The project highlighted a number of concerns, one of which was that the areas in India where we buy our alphonso mangoes are already experiencing climatic change and that this is likely to intensify in coming years. These findings were supported by discussions with mango growers who described warmer winters, changes to the monsoon, reduced pollination levels and even hail storms (apparently not all that common). In 2010 we commenced a project to identify farming practices that will help the mango trees adjust to the changed climate, and still allow the production of quality fruit. We are working with 18 farms for 2 years, allowing us to trial the farming practices across two complete harvest seasons.

We are now at the end of the first harvest season and the initial results from the trial look great. The farms participating in the trial used 50% less agrochemicals, achieved between 25-40% greater fruit retention and also a slightly larger fruit size. Good for the farmers, good for the environment and a great result given the changing climate.

It's still early days though so lots more work to do. Over the next harvest season we will continue working with the farmers, with the ultimate aim of producing guidance documents and training for all the farms.