Tuscany Announces Funds to Prevent Olive Grove Abandonment

In Italy, the regional gov­ern­ment of Tuscany is invest­ing €6 mil­lion over five years to pro­mote bio­di­ver­sity, main­tain the land­scape and counter the aban­don­ment of olive groves and other tree crops.

By December 29^th, olive grow­ers in the region can apply for a max­i­mum of €840 per hectare, while chest­nut farm­ers will receive €600 per hectare.

During the pre­sen­ta­tion of the ini­tia­tive, the regional author­i­ties stated how thor­ough and con­tin­u­ous main­te­nance of these crops is cru­cial to cur­tail the hydro­ge­o­log­i­cal risk and pre­vent wild­fires.

Those funds will be directed to grow­ers whose orchards are located in chal­leng­ing areas, such as steep slopes or ter­races. The farm­ing costs asso­ci­ated with these groves are con­sid­er­ably higher than those in plains, and their pro­duc­tiv­ity is often lower.

Additionally, many of those groves cover small sur­faces, mak­ing it even harder for a sin­gle grower to develop a func­tional eco­nomic model.

According to the regional gov­ern­ment, those con­di­tions trig­gered the phe­nom­e­non of the aban­don­ment of olive groves with con­se­quences on pro­duc­tion vol­umes and land­scape.

Tuscan grow­ers can also access the offi­cial list of fund recip­i­ents if their groves are listed as part of the his­tor­i­cal rural land­scapes of national inter­est.

Funds will also go to those olive groves included in the con­ven­tion to pro­tect the world’s cul­tural and nat­ural her­itage main­tained by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).

Special atten­tion will be given to those orchards at risk of aban­don­ment and located in areas asso­ci­ated with one of the five Tuscan regions with a Protected Designation of Origin (PDO) and Protected Geographical Indication (PGI) cer­ti­fi­ca­tion.

Starting January 2024, olive grow­ers and care­tak­ers will be assigned the funds only if they com­ply with sev­eral oblig­a­tions.

Those include prun­ing the trees dur­ing the first, third and fifth years of the ini­tia­tive. Growers will also have to annu­ally cut the suck­ers from the trees and remove them before June, as excess veg­e­ta­tion could trig­ger wild­fires.

To limit the spread of the olive fruit fly, the olives will have to be har­vested at least three times dur­ing the five years of the ini­tia­tive.

The list of oblig­a­tions also includes a com­plete ban on the use of her­bi­cides.

Some asso­ci­a­tions are work­ing to recover as many groves as pos­si­ble, and a recent ini­tia­tive was launched to attract funds to restore thou­sands of hectares of olive groves aban­doned on the Apennines, the 1,200-kilometer moun­tain range in cen­tral Italy.

The olive tree is a crit­i­cal com­po­nent of the Tuscan iden­tity and his­tory. ​“Our olive trees grow on the rounded hills you can see while head­ing to Florence. The cypress trees and the farm­houses on top of the hills are all char­ac­ter­is­tics of the renowned Tuscan land­scape,” Giovan Battista Donati, pres­i­dent of the Arezzo olive oil miller asso­ci­a­tion, told Olive Oil Times in January 2023.

“Such unique beauty has brought to the Made in Tuscany as a qual­ity ori­gin brand asso­ci­ated with olive oil pro­duc­tion, wine, arts and land­scape,” Donati added.