'Heroic' Olive Cultivation in Italy Still a Struggle, but Fighting Back

Two recent ini­tia­tives in Italy have attempted to shine a light on the dif­fi­cul­ties faced by those who prac­tice olive grow­ing in chal­leng­ing ter­rain. A recent con­fer­ence in Tuscany, which bought together pro­duc­ers and experts, fol­lowed the launch of a cen­sus in January by the Ministry of Agriculture with the aim of map­ping out for the first time what has been referred to as the country’s ​“heroic cul­ti­va­tion.”

There are also signs of pro­duc­ers fight­ing back to cre­ate an eco­nom­i­cally sus­tain­able future in some parts of Italy. It is a recog­ni­tion that this type of agri­cul­ture is not only behind some of the country’s most char­ac­ter­is­tic prod­ucts but fre­quently plays a vital but unher­alded role in pro­tect­ing tra­di­tional land­scapes.

The term ​“heroic cul­ti­va­tion” was coined to describe the pun­ish­ing nature of agri­cul­ture that is car­ried out in areas where the land is too steep, or too remote, for mechan­i­cal assis­tance.

Examples fre­quently cited include farm­ers grow­ing the prized lemons on the steep ter­raced land around the Amalfi coast, and the efforts involved in grow­ing grapes on the island of Pantelleria, which have to be trans­ported by boat to Sicily for pro­cess­ing. Three years ago, we also high­lighted the dif­fi­cul­ties encoun­tered by Massimiliano Gaiatto, who makes oil from olives that he grows on the hills sur­round­ing Lake Como.

One man acutely aware of the chal­lenges that farm­ers face is Giampiero Cresti, vice pres­i­dent of Toscano IGP, the con­sor­tium that pro­tects stan­dards of extra vir­gin olive oil pro­duced in Tuscany, a region where around 30 per­cent of olive cul­ti­va­tion is under­taken on land too steep for con­ven­tional farm­ing meth­ods. In April, Toscano IGP orga­nized a con­fer­ence bring­ing together pro­duc­ers and agri­cul­tural experts to dis­cuss the value of this type of farm­ing and approaches to pro­mot­ing and safe­guard­ing it.

“The prin­ci­pal dif­fi­culty,” Cresti told the Olive Oil Times, ​“is the impos­si­bil­ity of using machin­ery or tech­nol­ogy in the olive groves — every­thing has to be done man­u­ally with tools that are often old and no longer effec­tive.”

The ​“very real risk,” Cresti added, is the aban­don­ment of this land due to a lack of labor and scant eco­nomic return. When this hap­pens, olive oil pro­duc­tion is not the only thing to suf­fer.

The aban­don­ment of the cen­turies-old agri­cul­tural sys­tems of water man­age­ment, for exam­ple, could lead to an increased risk of land­slides, while the dry-stone walls dot­ted through­out the Tuscan land­scape could also dis­ap­pear. ​“In short,” cau­tioned Cresti, ​“we’re not deal­ing with a purely agri­cul­tural prob­lem, but one that affects every­one.”

In recog­ni­tion of the risks Cresti described, the Italian Ministry of Agriculture launched a cen­sus in January aimed at map­ping out the extent of Italy’s heroic agri­cul­ture for the first time.

Any agri­cul­tural busi­ness, includ­ing olive farm­ers, that con­sid­ered itself to be farm­ing in ter­rain pre­sent­ing par­tic­u­lar dif­fi­cul­ties was invited to par­tic­i­pate. The then Minister for Agriculture Maurizio Martina, speak­ing to La Stampa news­pa­per, said that the sur­vey ​“would make it pos­si­ble to work on ways to sup­port these heroic enter­prises,” adding that they were ​“one of the most char­ac­ter­is­tic forms of Italian agri­cul­ture.”

Further north in Liguria, farm­ers face sim­i­lar chal­lenges to their coun­ter­parts in Tuscany but are unit­ing behind a project that aims to make olive cul­ti­va­tion on the region’s steep slopes an eco­nom­i­cally sus­tain­able prac­tice, with­out sup­port from the gov­ern­ment.

TreeDream was set up by Flavio Lenardon, orig­i­nally from Friuli Venezia Giulia but Ligurian by adop­tion. He was struck by what he calls the ​“cathe­dral” of Liguria’s ter­raced slopes that rise steeply from the sea and are sus­tained by miles and miles of dry-stone walls, with the small plots in between home to many thou­sands of olive trees. ​“A shiver ran through me,” said Lenardon. ​“When I saw that most of these mar­velous walls were in a state of aban­don­ment, with the woods tak­ing over, I real­ized that we were los­ing our his­tory and our roots.”

Lenardon defines TreeDream, which has a tree held in an out­stretched hand as its logo, as a ​“cul­tural move­ment.” The project unites olive farm­ers and oth­ers with an inter­est in pre­serv­ing the region’s agri­cul­tural land­scape. ​“Its aim is the rebirth of olive cul­ti­va­tion at alti­tude and com­mu­ni­cat­ing the chal­lenges linked to this kind of land, bring­ing together all those who do not want to aban­don what their ances­tors built,” said Lenardon.

The con­se­quences of the project go beyond an increase in the quan­tity of olives pro­duced at alti­tude and could play an impor­tant role in pro­tect­ing vil­lages from nat­ural dis­as­ters. In 2011, flood­ing and land­slides hit vil­lages in Cinque Terre caus­ing wide­spread dam­age. The dis­re­pair of the area’s dry-stone walls and ter­rac­ing was widely believed to be one of the con­tribut­ing fac­tors.

Lenardon believes the key to a return to tra­di­tional olive cul­ti­va­tion in Liguria is an aware­ness of the spe­cial qual­i­ties of oils made from olives grown at alti­tude. ​“It is well-known by now that the pres­ence of aro­matic and health-giv­ing com­po­nents is increased by sit­u­a­tions of water and cli­matic stress, such as those you find in areas of higher alti­tude,” he said. It’s a view sup­ported by oth­ers, includ­ing experts such as writer and jour­nal­ist Luigi Caricato who ded­i­cated a guide to high-alti­tude olive oils in 2005.

Unique oils from olives har­vested by hand in chal­leng­ing con­di­tions should com­mand higher prices but com­mu­ni­cat­ing that to con­sumers is not always easy. To help farm­ers who are part of the TreeDream project, Lenardon came up with a label, which he called Taggialto. The name com­bines Taggiasca, the most wide­spread olive cul­ti­var in Liguria, with alto, Italian for ​‘high.’ Olives from farms in the scheme are milled and bot­tled under the label and it has enjoyed suc­cess, win­ning a list­ing at the famous Milanese food hall, Peck.

Lenardon was clear on what is required to safe­guard Liguria’s heroic olive cul­ti­va­tion and, in turn, the preser­va­tion of its rural geog­ra­phy and cul­ture. ​“All that pro­duc­ers need is for their prod­uct to be rec­og­nized for its real value. Support from insti­tu­tions should focus on com­mu­ni­ca­tion, help­ing our move­ment and oth­ers relaunch this type of olive cul­ti­va­tion,” he said.

There are also encour­ag­ing signs else­where in Italy. Olive Oil Times recently reported on the growth of olive cul­ti­va­tion and pro­duc­tion of olive oil in Valle d’Aosta, the small­est and one of the most moun­tain­ous regions of Italy.

At the other end of the coun­try a new project, with the name Regeroli, was announced in May in the south­ern region of Calabria with the aim of relaunch­ing olive cul­ti­va­tion at alti­tude in the region’s Sila moun­tain range.

• La Stampa


• TreeDream


• Toscano IGP