Marenlk’s Weblog

Apples – the favourite fruit of the German. But what are the facts behind these tasty snacks? And what do they have to do with our topic “globalization”? 

Germanyis one of the countries where most of the apple- growing areas are located. The most important arable lands are these in Baden-Württemberg, Sachsen-Anhalt and Altes Land.In 2004 apples come to 80% of the harvest from fruits growing on trees in Germany and there are many different, delicious sorts. 

But: Why do many of the apples in the supermarket come from foreign countries like New Zealand?And why are they as sheep as our German apples?All this is owed to globalization.Now you will wonder what’s behind it, you want to know the facts,the advantages and disadvantages, why people buy foreign apples instead of the good old German ones, right?   –  I will tell you.

 The last question I can answer quickly. The reason why people buy apples from other countries, although they want to protect workplaces in their region, is that they simply do not pay attention to the place their apples come from.But they should – especially for the nature: the CO2 output during the transport of 1 kilo apples from Italy to e.g. Munich is three times higher than the output during an apple transport from Baden-Württemberg to Munich. 

To inform people about that, there is a proposition to equip every apple in a German supermarket with a logo, which shows the amount of emission in the colours of traffic lights. Maybe this would cause that the industries would reduce their CO2 output and that people buy more local fruits.Therefore, in my opinion it is really worth to consider this idea which resembles a successful measure in England. 

Another ecologically friendly possibility is for example the action of the firm “Eosta” which supplies Edeka, Plus, Lidl and Aldi with fruits from New Zealand, Argentina and so on. This company works in principle CO2- neutral:  They calculate all CO2- emissions and transfer an adequate sum e.g. to a reforestation project in Indonesia. 

My conclusion: An apple is a good symbol for globalization. The trend of exporting goods goes on and on, we can’t stop it. In the last five years, for example, the apple-export from Argentina was tripled (10.000t), although there was such a high apple-harvest in Germany. It doesn’t matter from which perspective we regard it, the advantages and disadvantages for the consumer don’t play a big role.For the companies it is important, that they buy oneself the cheapest goods, to make as much profit as possible. Sad, I think.    

Sources :

www.hfg-offenbach.de/data/g/groC39Fstephanie_Logo.pdfhttp:            http://www.kaltern.com/ger/wein_show.asp?id=%7B6F26B6CD-6D2A-4A66-99CD-A0CEFDFE88B9%7Dhttp:                                                                                                                                       www.stern.de/wirtschaft/unternehmen/maerkte/593835.html?p=2&nv=ct_cb 

1956: The realisation of a man’s idea and simultaneously the breakthrough in the history of transporting goods.When Malcolm McLean was a trucker, he watched almost every day numerous labourers unloading the goods from his truck and heaving them on the freighters troublesomely. One day he asked himself: What if they laded the whole truck? This would be time and power saving!At that time he didn’t know that this notion will change the world.

On April 26, everything became true: the first containership, owned by McLean, left the Port Newark with Texas as its destination. On board: 58 transport-boxes created by McLean himself, which have succeeded in revolutionizing the trade.

 Today, about 50 years later, container market is still booming. It is growing nearly three times as fast as the world economy! Unbelievable, I think.It is due to it, that the global trade has been tripled since the eighties.Another impressing fact: 90 percent of the international trade is doing by ship; two thirds of the goods are stored in containers.

My favourite topics are “Africa” and “Resources – Energy – Global Changes”.

In my opinion it would be interesting to find out more about the african culture, the people living there, the landscape or the politics. We never talked about it at school.

Moreover, “Resources – Energy – Global Changes” is a very topical and important theme, consequently the facts are worth knowing .

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