Organic Farming, High Quality Often Hand In Hand

Antica Quercia Verde obtained two Gold Awards in a row at the NYIOOC with an organic extra vir­gin olive oil made on the hills of Tuscany. ​“The orchard’s soil has always been chem­i­cal-free,” said Josiane Ferlan, who runs the farm with her hus­band, Pietro Zecchini and their sons Joshua and Jeremy. ​“We man­age 500 sec­u­lar plants of Frantoio, Moraiolo and Leccino and a small group of rare and unclas­si­fied vari­eties,” she said about their grove spread over 3.5 hectares (8.6 acres) of ter­races fac­ing south, toward the beau­ti­ful town of Cortona.

“The olive trees were most likely planted when the ter­races that host them were built, so we are talk­ing about some cen­turies,” Zecchini con­sid­ered, adding that the posi­tion is not the most com­fort­able due to the steep ter­rain and a flour­ish­ing veg­e­ta­tion that must be con­stantly keep under con­trol. ​“We must often use trim­mers and brush cut­ters, and some­times, among the wild herbs, we plant legu­mi­nous green manure crops such as vetch,” he explained.

The dif­fi­cult man­age­ment of plants is mit­i­gated by a very spe­cial atmos­phere. The olive grove is right under the her­mitage of Le Celle, a con­vent founded in 1211 by Saint Francis of Assisi, who built the first cells of the struc­ture with his fol­low­ers.

“Since the old road to the con­vent passed through our farm, Saint Francis cer­tainly used to walk among these olive trees,” the pro­ducer revealed. ​“I can say that the whole val­ley is mag­i­cal as regards to the pro­duc­tion of extra vir­gin olive oil,” Zecchini noted. ​“When I was a child and went to visit wine cel­lars in Montepulciano, the wine­mak­ers used to say: ​‘We here make a good wine, you guys over there make a good oil.’ This means that this has always been rec­og­nized as great prod­uct, prob­a­bly thanks to the soil and cli­mate con­di­tions which really seem to be blessed.”

However, last sea­son was par­tic­u­larly chal­leng­ing. ​“We start har­vest­ing oper­a­tions in early October after a very quick ripen­ing,” said Ferlan. She explained that in September fruits weren’t absolutely ready to be picked. First con­cerns were caused by cold weather in mid-April and early May, then a hot and dry sum­mer halted the veg­e­ta­tive growth. But in early fall fruits devel­oped rapidly. ​“At the end, tests of the prod­uct showed that the polyphe­nols were much more than those of last year and the acid­ity was min­i­mal,” she revealed. ​“Sensory analy­sis con­firmed that our extra vir­gin olive oil is excel­lent.”

This year they decided to delay and reduce prun­ing, and this well-timed action fur­ther pro­tected plants from the effects of the recent cold wave in Italy. In early April, they will go back to olive grove to carry out the appro­pri­ate cut oper­a­tions.

Organic extra vir­gin olive oil is appre­ci­ated by Italian con­sumers. While in coun­tries like Spain the term ​‘organic’ on the label does not seem to cre­ate added value, in the Boot the demand of con­sumers for prod­ucts made with­out the use of syn­thetic fer­til­iz­ers is increas­ing.

“In the 1970s and 1980s the organic approach has mostly devel­oped in north­ern European coun­tries,” said Angelo Bo, a Tuscany-based agron­o­mist spe­cial­ized in organic olive grow­ing. ​“Therefore, Italy started to export its chem­i­cal-free prod­ucts launch­ing a trend which has grown over the years, also at the national level.”

In organic farm­ing, syn­thetic fer­til­iz­ers and pes­ti­cides are not allowed and we can use only sub­stances of nat­ural, non-syn­thetic ori­gin, which must in any case be man­aged wisely, Bo explained. ​“According to this approach, we need to work on the agro­nomic man­age­ment of olive trees with a view to pre­serve the right bal­ance and nutri­tion,” he sug­gested. ​“The health­ier the plants will be, the less prob­lems arise, and we will be han­dling with the low­est num­ber of pathogens.”

“We have to say that this method is pos­si­ble and give excel­lent results in cer­tain ter­ri­to­r­ial and cli­matic con­di­tions, and with appro­pri­ate olive vari­eties,” Bo spec­i­fied. ​“In this sense, the autochtho­nous cul­ti­vars turned out to be use­ful. Protection of bio­di­ver­sity is not only among the pur­poses of this type of farm­ing but also the first step to take for a suc­cess­ful chem­i­cal-free approach.”

Organic olive grow­ers use this method not only for its pos­i­tive envi­ron­men­tal impact, but also for the high lev­els of qual­ity that it is pos­si­ble to achieve, as proven by some of this year’s best extra vir­gin olive oil, like Antica Quercia Verde, Domenica Fiore, and many oth­ers.

The growth in pro­duc­tion and con­sump­tion of organic food in Italy was evi­denced in a report recently launched by the SINAB (National Information System on Organic Agriculture), based on a project of the MiPAAF (Ministry of Agricultural, Food and Forestry Policies) car­ried out by the ISMEA (Institute of Services for the Agricultural and Food Market) and the CIHEAM (International Center for Advanced Mediterranean Agronomic Studies).

According to the doc­u­ment, the areas cul­ti­vated under organic meth­ods in Italy have reached 1,796,363 hectares (4,438,909 acres) in 2017, which means an increase of 20.4 per­cent com­pared with the pre­vi­ous year.

Olive groves cover 12.6 per­cent of the sur­face cul­ti­vated under organic farm­ing, with 222,452 ha (549,690 acres), of which 72,053 ha (178,046 acres) are in con­ver­sion. The olive tree is there­fore among the prin­ci­pal types of farm­ing prac­ticed, with an increase of 23.5 per­cent, and a growth rate sim­i­lar to vines (23.4 per­cent), after fod­der crops (342,653 ha — 846,714 acres), pas­ture­lands (321,011 ha — 793,235 acres), and cere­als (299,639 ha — 740,424 acres).

The sec­tor is at the cen­ter of the coun­try’s devel­op­ment poli­cies and is closely man­aged by the European and Italian insti­tu­tions through a sys­tem of rules which are con­tin­u­ally ver­i­fied and updated. Thanks to these guar­an­tees, con­sumers are con­fi­dent in organic foods.

According to Coldiretti, based on data relat­ing to the large-scale dis­trib­u­tors in Italy, retail sales of organic food in 2017 increased by 16 per­cent. The unin­ter­rupted growth in demand over the last decade stim­u­lated the pro­duc­tion in the coun­try, which is cur­rently the European leader for the num­ber of organic com­pa­nies.