Olive Growers in Madrid Benefit from CAP Funds

Officials in the autonomous com­mu­nity of Madrid have approved the release of funds from Spain’s national strate­gic plan for the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) to sup­port organic and tra­di­tional olive groves.

The ini­tia­tive pro­vides €8.5 mil­lion to olive grow­ers in Madrid until 2027, when the cur­rent CAP expires, who fol­low the require­ments and the com­mit­ments included in the pol­icy.

“It is very inter­est­ing to pro­mote bio­di­ver­sity and tra­di­tional olive trees,” Pedro Laguna, owner of Villaconejos-based Oleum Laguna, told Olive Oil Times. ​“This will also help grow­ers who suf­fered the huge dam­age caused by Storm Filomena in 2021 when many trees had to be felled and new plan­ta­tions took their place.”

The fund­ing announce­ment came after the European Union approved the Protected Designation of Origin cer­ti­fi­ca­tion for extra vir­gin olive oil pro­duced in Madrid.

“When we think about Madrid, we all visu­al­ize the cap­i­tal with its large build­ings, muse­ums, restau­rants, asphalt and cars,” Laguna said. ​“But in the region, there is also farm­land. Even though it is not that large, we have a vibrant agri­cul­tural com­mu­nity.”

There are about 20,000 hectares of olive groves in the com­mu­nity of Madrid, rep­re­sent­ing approx­i­mately one per­cent of Spain’s total olive-grow­ing sur­face area.

To be eli­gi­ble for the fund­ing, the regional gov­ern­ment requires farm­ers to fol­low tra­di­tional olive cul­ti­va­tion prac­tices instead of plant­ing at high-den­sity or super-high-den­sity (inten­sive or super-inten­sive) for a min­i­mum of five years.

Furthermore, farm­ers must have at least one hectare of olive groves with between 60 and 150 trees fol­low­ing ​“a reg­u­lar and homoge­nous dis­tri­b­u­tion” to receive funds.

Eligible farm­ers will receive €100 per hectare up to 40 hectares. Traditional farms larger than 40 hectares will receive €60 per hectare.

Like many of his col­leagues in Villaconejos, about 40 kilo­me­ters south of the cap­i­tal, Laguna cul­ti­vates tra­di­tional and high-den­sity olive groves on 55 hectares.

“We work with tra­di­tional cen­tury-old olive trees which were planted in 10 by 10 meter lots,” he said. ​“These are quite dif­fer­ent than the 2 by 5 meters of the inten­sive olive crops.”

“In Villaconejos, there are olive trees more than 300 years old,” Laguna added. ​“Local olive grow­ers are quite knowl­edge­able about this type of plant, a knowl­edge and expe­ri­ence passed on to the younger gen­er­a­tions.”

Along with har­vest­ing his olives, Laguna also buys olives from other local grow­ers in Vallaconejos, which is home to a sig­nif­i­cant por­tion of the region’s olive groves, along with the nearby munic­i­pal­i­ties of Las Vegas, Suroccidental and La Campiña.

The area pro­duces up to 6,500 tons of olive oil in an aver­age sea­son, and seven of the 18 active olive mills focus solely on organic olive oil pro­duc­tion.

Many tra­di­tional grow­ers in the area have a long tra­di­tion of organic farm­ing, which has helped pro­tect the area’s rich bio­di­ver­sity.

“Any organic prod­uct is the bearer of health, and when we are talk­ing about extra vir­gin olive oils, that is even more so, given its high con­tent in oleic acid and polyphe­nols,” Laguna said.

“We use com­post and manure to increase the soil’s organic mat­ter; we work to have our soil bet­ter retain nutri­ents and mois­ture, thus decreas­ing water stress for the olives,” he added. ​“At the farm, we also work on the plant cover to fix nitro­gen nat­u­rally and avoid soil ero­sion.”

Laguna’s fam­ily has grown olives in Madrid for at least four gen­er­a­tions. ​“Since 2017, my sis­ter Pilar and I started a project to build an organic, envi­ron­men­tally-friendly farm focused on early har­vests and high-qual­ity extra vir­gin olive oil pro­duc­tion,” Laguna said.

While olive oil is at the core of Spanish cui­sine, the gen­eral pub­lic pays far less atten­tion to how it is pro­duced or whether it is organic. However, Laguna said this may be start­ing to change.

“There is still a long way to go in terms of edu­ca­tion, but there is more con­cern about the eco­log­i­cal issue, and this makes con­sumers increas­ingly dif­fer­en­ti­ate organic food from con­ven­tional food,” Laguna said.

Besides pub­lic fund­ing and the acknowl­edg­ment that tra­di­tional groves are most com­pat­i­ble with main­tain­ing bio­di­ver­sity, Laguna believes that pre­serv­ing tra­di­tional olive groves requires pro­mot­ing the cul­ture behind them.

“We started offer­ing oleo­tourism expe­ri­ences, through which our guests can visit the fields, see first­hand the process of olive trans­for­ma­tion and taste our three dif­fer­ent types of extra vir­gin olive oils,” he said.

• Autonomous Community of Madrid