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Super High Density (SHD) olive farm­ing is a mod­ern cul­ti­va­tion tech­nique designed to opti­mize yield, qual­ity, and effi­ciency in olive pro­duc­tion. Key char­ac­ter­is­tics of SHD olive farm­ing include:

• High Plant Density: Traditional olive groves have fewer trees per hectare, while SHD sys­tems plant 1,500 to 2,500 trees per hectare. This high den­sity allows for more effi­cient land use and higher yields.
• Small Tree Size: Trees in SHD groves are kept small, usu­ally no taller than 2.5 meters, facil­i­tat­ing har­vest­ing and main­te­nance. The trees are pruned to have a nar­row and elon­gated shape, often trained in a hedgerow pat­tern.
• Mechanized Harvesting: Due to the uni­form and acces­si­ble size of the trees, SHD olive farm­ing allows for mechan­i­cal har­vest­ing. This dra­mat­i­cally reduces the time and labor costs asso­ci­ated with tra­di­tional hand-pick­ing.
• Improved Efficiency: The arrange­ment and man­age­ment of the trees improve light dis­tri­b­u­tion and air cir­cu­la­tion, lead­ing to health­ier trees and poten­tially higher-qual­ity olives.
• Early Production: Trees planted in a SHD sys­tem usu­ally come into pro­duc­tion ear­lier than those in tra­di­tional sys­tems, often within 3 – 4 years, com­pared to 5 – 12 years for tra­di­tional groves.
• Varietal Selection: Not all olive vari­eties are suit­able for SHD. Varieties cho­sen for SHD sys­tems typ­i­cally adapt well to high-den­sity plant­ing and mechan­i­cal har­vest­ing.

SHD farm­ing is promi­nent in regions look­ing to mod­ern­ize olive pro­duc­tion and increase effi­ciency, par­tic­u­larly where land and labor costs are high. It has rev­o­lu­tion­ized the indus­try by allow­ing grow­ers to pro­duce olives at lower costs and with more pre­dictable yields, though it also requires sig­nif­i­cant ini­tial invest­ment and care­ful man­age­ment.

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