The Olive Farm that Breathed New Life into Cyprus’s No Man’s Land

Summary

Atsas Organic Products in Evrychou, Cyprus, was founded by George David in 2012 in the buffer zone of the island, pro­duc­ing high-phe­no­lic extra vir­gin olive oil. The com­pany has become a lead­ing olive oil pro­ducer in Cyprus, focus­ing on sus­tain­abil­ity, bio­di­ver­sity, and agri­cul­tural edu­ca­tion, and has won awards at inter­na­tional com­pe­ti­tions like the NYIOOC World Olive Oil Competition.

In the small vil­lage of Evrychou on the island of Cyprus, Atsas Organic Products is the result of the insa­tiable desire of George David to cre­ate an olive farm.

David started the fam­ily-owned com­pany from scratch back in 2012 by pur­chas­ing agri­cul­tural land in Cyprus’s buffer zone, also called ​‘the Green Line’ or ​‘the Dead Zone,’ the nar­row bor­der strip which acts as a buffer between the Greek-Cypriot and the Turkish-Cypriot com­mu­ni­ties of the island.

By inter­na­tional stan­dards, Cyprus is a small olive oil-pro­duc­ing nation with an annual yield of 2,500 to 3,000 tons of olive oil. However, the com­pany set the bar high from the out­set, being pas­sion­ate about pro­duc­ing a dis­tinc­tive olive oil to set it apart from the com­pe­ti­tion.

“When we decided to enter the world of olive oil pro­duc­tion, we didn’t want to cre­ate merely another extra vir­gin olive oil of high qual­ity,” Nicholas Savvides, the com­pa­ny’s com­mer­cial man­ager, told Olive Oil Times. ​“We wanted to cre­ate a pre­mium, high-phe­no­lic extra vir­gin olive oil to make a dif­fer­ence in the indus­try.”

The con­di­tions were ideal for the ven­ture the com­pany took on; due to being in the buffer zone, very close to the vil­lage of Petra, where David comes from, the acquired land had been left uncul­ti­vated for more than 45 years. It pro­vided the per­fect ground to grow olive trees.

“Our land lies inside the dead zone in the Solea Valley,” Savvides said. ​“The soil was vir­tu­ally vir­gin and free of any biotic and abi­otic fac­tors. Our grove grad­u­ally evolved into an eco-friendly farm that became a par­a­digm and a learn­ing cen­ter for sus­tain­able devel­op­ment.”

After a lot of exper­i­men­ta­tion and focused research, the com­pany achieved its ulti­mate pur­pose of pro­duc­ing a high-polyphe­nol extra vir­gin olive oil.

“In 2017, our olive oil was found to be the rich­est in polyphe­nol com­pounds among 7,854 olive oils from 15 coun­tries and holds the record until today,” Savvides proudly said. ​“This was the great­est reward and a boost to con­tinue our work.”

Over the years, Atsas Organic Products has become one of Cyprus’s lead­ing olive oil pro­duc­ers and has enjoyed a rep­u­ta­tion for its organic olive oil.

A wide range of high-polyphe­nol mono­va­ri­etals and blends are pro­duced at Atsas farm. The com­pany has also mar­keted its olive oil as a nat­ural food sup­ple­ment avail­able in bot­tles of 10 mil­li­liters.

“Olive oil is a sta­ple food, part of our cul­ture and tra­di­tion and one of our most beloved and famil­iar fla­vors,” Savvides said. ​“It helps reg­u­late blood sugar lev­els and pro­tects against heart dis­ease and can­cer.”

“According to E.U. reg­u­la­tion 432/2012, the daily con­sump­tion of 20 grams of high-phe­no­lic olive oil can pro­tect the human body from oxida­tive stress,” he added.

Atsas farm is vir­tu­ally an all-inclu­sive estab­lish­ment focused on olive oil pro­duc­tion, fea­tur­ing 30 hectares of olive groves, a mod­ern mill and a bot­tling and pack­ag­ing facil­ity.

“In our irri­gated olive groves, we grow 6,500 olive trees of var­i­ous cul­ti­vars, includ­ing Koroneiki, Kalamon and Kypriaki,” Savvides said. ​“We have also come to an agree­ment with other pro­duc­ers in the area to nur­ture their olive trees.”

Atsas Organic Products has also made great strides in adopt­ing regen­er­a­tive and sus­tain­able agri­cul­ture tech­niques.

All oper­a­tions in the olive groves, includ­ing har­vest­ing the olives and prun­ing the trees, are per­formed using man­u­ally-oper­ated tools or small-scale mechan­i­cal equip­ment to min­i­mize the impact on the trees from using fully-mech­a­nized har­vest­ing meth­ods and heavy machin­ery.

In addi­tion, the water­ing of the trees is achieved by col­lect­ing rain­wa­ter in an arti­fi­cial lake on the farm to pre­serve the nat­ural under­ground water reserves.

Special care has also been taken towards pre­serv­ing the bio­di­ver­sity on Atsas farm.

Apart from olive trees, sev­eral other types of trees, includ­ing pome­gran­ate and fig trees and even cac­tus trees, flour­ish, pro­mot­ing bio­di­ver­sity and pro­vid­ing food to local fauna.

Bird nests have also been installed on the farm to pro­vide shel­ter to native bird species.

“We also avoid remov­ing the clus­ters of indige­nous plants that grow on our farm,” Savvides said. ​“They pro­vide habi­tat to use­ful insects and microor­gan­isms that help con­trol pests and fun­gus.”

“In advance, we don’t com­pletely erad­i­cate weeds, but we pre­fer to trim them off, leav­ing plant mate­r­ial on the soil to ini­ti­ate green com­post­ing pro­ce­dures,” he added. ​“We also grow plants such as vetch and lucerne along the olive tree lines in our farm to enrich the soil with nutri­ents.”

Disseminating the knowl­edge obtained in agri­cul­tural devel­op­ment and the cul­ti­va­tion of the olive tree is another area Atsas Organic Products has set foot in, estab­lish­ing a train­ing cen­ter in the vil­lage of Katydata open to every­body look­ing to delve into the world of agri­cul­ture.

“The train­ing cen­ter real­izes our vision to fos­ter agri­cul­tural devel­op­ment and edu­cate our fel­low cit­i­zens through sem­i­nars and other edu­ca­tional pro­grams,” Savvides said. ​“We also want to encour­age them to get involved in agri­cul­ture and pro­mote the pro­duc­tion of sta­ple foods of the Cypriot cui­sine.”

The pro­ducer rep­re­sented Cyprus in the 2022 NYIOOC World Olive Oil Competition, earn­ing a Silver Award for the Atsas Silver Edition blend made from Kalamon and Koroneiki olives.

In the pre­vi­ous edi­tion of the com­pe­ti­tion, the com­pany earned a Gold Award for its sil­ver edi­tion line of organic extra vir­gin olive oils.

“It is a great honor to win at the pres­ti­gious NYIOOC, and every award we receive is the tan­gi­ble proof that the hard and method­i­cal work of our team has paid off,” Savvides said. ​“It is extremely impor­tant for Cyprus to be on the global olive oil map.”

The com­pany is any­thing but con­tent with its suc­cess so far, look­ing to set new goals for the near future and fur­ther cement its foun­da­tions.

“Our short-term objec­tive is to increase our capac­ity of olive oil pro­duc­tion and extend our prod­ucts port­fo­lio to organic table olives and olive paste,” Savvides said.

“We also intend to increase our exports to Europe, Asia and the U.S.,” he added. ​“However, pro­duc­ing an exquis­ite olive oil rich in polyphe­nols to top the com­pe­ti­tion is a chal­lenge to us year in, year out.”

An ardu­ous jour­ney may lie ahead for Atsas Organic Products, Savvides finally noted, with cli­mate change pos­ing the most sig­nif­i­cant threat by impact­ing the phe­no­lic stages of olive trees and shift­ing their growth cycle through­out the sea­son.

Nevertheless, the company’s extra vir­gin olive oil could be the best guar­an­tee of an aus­pi­cious future in olive oil pro­duc­tion.

“Our organic olive groves are the proof that what started as a response to the acute nos­tal­gia for the past became an indus­try pio­neer,” Savvides said.

“We are very opti­mistic about the future since the high-phe­no­lic olive oil cat­e­gory exhibits great poten­tial,” he con­cluded. ​“Consumers every­where tend to opt for more healthy food prod­ucts, and extra vir­gin olive oil is quin­tes­sen­tial healthy eat­ing.”