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The Croatian island of Brač is set to host the 1^st World Championship in Olive Picking in October.

An ini­tia­tive of Postira’s Tourist Board, in coop­er­a­tion with the Postira Agricultural Cooperative and Aldura Sport – a local out­door adven­ture com­pany, the com­pe­ti­tion will take place from October 19 to 22, 2017.

The event is being pro­moted less as a com­pe­ti­tion and more as an ini­tia­tive to gather peo­ple from olive-pro­duc­ing regions from around the world to encour­age friend­ship and coop­er­a­tion. Participants will be pro­vided a stand where they can present their own olive prod­ucts, and edu­ca­tional trips around the island will be orga­nized.

Ivana Jelinčić, direc­tor of Postira’s Tourist Board, told Olive Oil Times that the objec­tive of the event is ​“to pro­mote Postira as an olive des­ti­na­tion where a com­pletely nat­ural, healthy and high-qual­ity olive oil is pro­duced in accor­dance with cen­turies-old tra­di­tions and high-qual­ity stan­dards.”

The par­tic­i­pat­ing teams from each coun­try will be made up of four mem­bers: two men and two women and the olives will be picked using hand pick­ing tech­niques only, which can include the use of hand rakes. The win­ning team that picks the most kilo­grams of fruit will be awarded medals and prizes pro­vided by local man­u­fac­tur­ers.

The set­ting will be the pic­turesque 16^th-cen­tury port vil­lage of Postira located on the north­ern coast of the island. The island of Brač has a cen­turies-long his­tory of olive cul­ti­va­tion and sev­eral local pro­duc­ers have won inter­na­tional awards for the high qual­ity of their extra vir­gin olive oil.

Besides the com­pe­ti­tion, a series of edu­ca­tional work­shops, lec­tures, tast­ings and enter­tain­ment are being orga­nized, includ­ing vis­its to the eco-ethno vil­lage of Dol and other excur­sions on the island of Brač.

“So far we have teams ready to par­tic­i­pate from Croatia, Italy, Slovenia, Montenergo and the Netherlands,” Jelinčić added. ​“But we would like to have par­tic­i­pants from other Mediterranean coun­tries like Spain, Portugal, Greece, and France, but of course peo­ple from all coun­tries are wel­come.”

• Postira Tourist Board


• Croatia Times