Officials in Castilla-La Mancha Look to Oleotourism to Boost Farmer Incomes

Efforts are under­way in Castilla-La Mancha, Spain’s sec­ond-largest olive oil-pro­duc­ing region, to pro­vide sup­ple­men­tary income to tra­di­tional olive grow­ers through oleo­tourism.

In the south­east­ern province of Albacete, farm­ers and gov­ern­ment offi­cials are work­ing together to develop new oleo­tourism oppor­tu­ni­ties, from build­ing farm­houses and muse­ums to orga­niz­ing tast­ings, vis­its to mills and olive groves and cul­tural events.

“Oleoturism arises as a form of eco­nomic diver­si­fi­ca­tion in regions such as this, regions where olive oil is pro­duced and where the tra­di­tional approach to olive oil mak­ing is cher­ished, as are its organolep­tic prop­er­ties,” said Ramón Sáez, the provin­cial del­e­gate of Agriculture, Water and Rural Development in Albacete.

He added that efforts to develop and pro­mote oleo­tourism are crit­i­cal to pro­vid­ing addi­tional rev­enue streams to tra­di­tional grow­ers, many of whom have become increas­ingly less com­pet­i­tive com­pared to high-den­sity and super-high-den­sity olive groves.

According to regional gov­ern­ment data, olive groves cover nearly 41,000 hectares in Albacete, of which about 30,000 are rain­fed. The province gen­er­ally pro­duces about 70,000 tons of olive oil each year from Picual, Arbequina and Cornicabra olives.

Sierra de Alcaraz, which hosts about 8,200 hectares of tra­di­tional olive groves, was high­lighted as an exam­ple where oleo­tourism can make a real dif­fer­ence for pro­duc­ers.

Already, the area has its own ​“col­lec­tive brand” to iden­tify tra­di­tion­ally-pro­duced extra vir­gin olive oil in an attempt to add value to the final prod­uct.

Officials hope that bring­ing tourists to see this cul­tural and his­tor­i­cal process will help pre­vent Spain’s rural exo­dus, a per­va­sive prob­lem in the coun­try which prompted the cre­ation of a ded­i­cated fed­eral gov­ern­ment min­istry.

In its 2021 report, the Spanish Traditional Grove Association (Asolite) warned that more than 1.3 mil­lion hectares of tra­di­tional groves are at risk of aban­don­ment, as profit mar­gins for farm­ers have fallen con­sid­er­ably while pro­duc­tion costs have risen steadily.

Along with pro­mot­ing oleo­tourism, local offi­cials also pledged sup­port to the province’s 8,000 hectares of organic olive groves, which account for about 20 per­cent of the total.

Under the region’s rural devel­op­ment pro­gram, organic farm­ers will receive €35 mil­lion over the next five years. Organic olive grow­ers will receive about €200 per hectare for the first 40 hectares.

“A spe­cific cou­pled aid for this type of olive grove, to alle­vi­ate the com­pet­i­tive dif­fi­culty of low-yield tra­di­tional olive groves, but which defines our land­scape, is an essen­tial ele­ment of the regional econ­omy due to its strong social impli­ca­tion in the gen­er­a­tion of employ­ment and the con­tain­ment of depop­u­la­tion,” the regional gov­ern­ment con­cluded.

• Castilla-La Mancha regional gov­ernemnt
• La Tribuna de Albecete