Eighth-leaf Jonagold trees on Malling 9 rootstocks in the orchard of Werner Sommerbauer at Puch, Austria. The net provides protection from both hail and sun. Central European countries used to produce apples on neglected, inefficient collective farms, but in the two decades since they lost their Communist shackles, the region’s agriculture has been privatized and transformed. Today, the orchards and fruit-packing houses of Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Austria, Germany, and Poland rival the most modern in the world. All those countries are now members of the European Union, which provides subsidies towards capital projects. “I was most impressed with the […]