Theoretical Financial Benefits to the Didcot Economy

Theoretical Financial Benefits to the Didcot Economy

Please excuse the fancy title, basically I want to demonstrate how this project might affect our town financially. In the spirit of keeping it simple, I'm still only working with the Apple theme at the moment. Without further ado here are some interesting numbers.

The Numbers

On Average an apple tree will bear about 100 apples per year (This is based on a, medium sized, 5-10 year old tree)

Didcot's population is currently around 26,000 people (This figure is really hard to come by but in 2001 census it was 22,762 so I've done a bit of guesswork here)

The retail price of apples range from 20p - 50p each (Note: We are aiming to grow the best apples!)

The Sums

If we wanted to grow enough apples so each person in Didcot gets 1 apple a year we would need 260 apple trees. If those apples had a value of 50p each, the whole lot would be worth £13,000. Even if we only managed to produce apples worth 20p each, they would still have a value of £5,200 (A highly unlikely situation). 

As part of the Ladygrove Loop development the South Oxfordshire District Council planted 1,800 trees. Lets for a minute imagine that they had planted apple trees and those 1,800 apple trees all produced 100 apples each, giving us 180,000 apples in total. That works out to be 6.9 apples each for every person in Didcot and if they were priced at 50p each that would be a total value of £90,000. Now lets not forget that these apple trees will produce fruit every year. 

So potentially as a town we could already be saving £90,000 per year, if the Council had planted apple trees instead of the other species. 

Ladygrove Loop Connection

I don't want to get too involved into the politics, and please don't get me wrong I think for the most part the Ladygrove Loop has been a success and is a great asset for Didcot, but I would like to point out that the Ladygrove Loop cost £395,000. I assume (Don't quote me on this as I don't know for sure) it was paid for by our Council Tax Contributions, so basically the people of Didcot paid for it. Had the Council planted apple trees and given the apples produced (180,000) to the people of Didcot for free (£90,000 per year) then the project would have paid for itself within 5 years (in the form of free apples). 

Conclusion

I hope you found those figures interesting and  i've given you a glimpse of the financial benefit we could all share as a result of this project. There are lots of other things to consider such as maintenance, environmental effects, distribution/transportation (of the apples), disease and pests, vandalism and more (I'm sure). All of which we'll cover at a later date.

Thanks for reading

~Mark