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Since October 2012, olive groves in the most fer­tile pre­fec­tures of Heraklion (E.A.S Peza), Lassithi (E.A.S. Mirabello) and Messinia (O.P. Nileas) in Southern Greece have par­taken of an eco­log­i­cal exper­i­ment under the aus­pices of the European Union.

The oLIVE CLIMA Project has been an effort to guide the Greek agri­cul­tural sec­tor toward effec­tively tack­ling the most dra­matic chal­lenges cli­mate change poses on the wider Mediterranean region by con­vert­ing olive cul­ti­va­tion into a cli­mate man­age­ment tool. 

With a bud­get of €3.65 mil­lion (funded by the Life Program of the EU), oLIVE CLIMA set the envi­ron­men­tal bar high from the out­set, and saw pos­i­tive results in the process, as three of its chief sci­en­tists explained to Olive Oil Times. 

The project aims to reduce green­house gases emis­sions, increase car­bon diox­ide cap­ture, reverse the trend of soil organic mat­ter losses, boost fer­til­ity and water reten­tion in olive grove soil, pro­vide farm­ers and con­sumers with a trans­par­ent infor­ma­tion sys­tem about the envi­ron­men­tal per­for­mance of food pro­duc­tion processes, lower the over­all olive oil pro­duc­tion cost and cre­ate added value from the stan­dard­iza­tion of cli­mate-friendly products. 

Forty parcels for each pilot area (120 in total) in both irri­gated and arid con­di­tions in the selected pre­fec­tures saw the imple­men­ta­tion of totally new cul­ti­va­tion practices. 

“We began with organic mat­ter cap­tur­ing,” said Georgios Koubouris, a researcher at oLIVE CLIMA and at the Greek Institute of Olive Tree, Subtropical Plants and Viticulture. ​“We recy­cled the wood pro­duced from tree prun­ing to use it as mulch or nutri­tion mate­r­ial, and uti­lized olive oil mill by-prod­ucts with land appli­ca­tion, either directly or after com­post­ing derived from either the process of olive grow­ing or olive oil production.”

“Then, we tried to cap­ture car­bon diox­ide from the atmos­phere and trans­fer it to plants through pho­to­syn­the­sis, plus store it in plant tis­sue and soil by mod­i­fy­ing the olive grove flora or the prun­ing of olive trees.” 

“Finally, we exper­i­mented with con­ser­va­tion prac­tices of organic mat­ter, and this through the zero use of tillage in order to limit ero­sion and destruc­tion of organic mat­ter and improve the soil water stor­age capacity.” 

Over four years since the pro­gram kicked off, the tech­niques employed to boost green olive oil pro­duc­tion in the regions bore fruit. 

“What was con­firmed is that most tech­niques are indeed applic­a­ble and reap imme­di­ate, vis­i­ble, and pos­i­tive finan­cial ben­e­fits,” said George Michalopoulos, agron­o­mist at oLIVE CLIMA and owner of Rodaxagrom an envi­ron­men­tal and agri­cul­ture con­sul­tancy company.

“Modified prun­ing and non-cul­ti­va­tion sys­tems are good exam­ples. Others, such as win­ter sow­ing, will be assessed over the long term, prob­a­bly over a decade, while tech­niques like com­post­ing will need a larger scale implementation. 

“Also, we saw that some prac­tices require more spe­cial­ized equip­ment, for exam­ple, olive mill waste water (OMW) dis­per­sion or crush­ing, espe­cially with regard to the pro­duc­tion of pel­lets. We should stress that we found all these prac­tices to assist the envi­ron­ment in a mul­ti­tude of ways, cli­mate change bat­tle aside. They boost water econ­omy, bio­di­ver­sity, soil fer­til­ity, pre­vent ero­sion and many many more.” 

As for the atti­tudes of cri­sis-stricken local farm­ers toward inno­v­a­tive green prac­tices, Koubouris said that they wel­comed some of the new prac­tices like com­post­ing, spe­cial prun­ing, non-cul­ti­va­tion, or win­ter sow­ing. OMW dis­per­sion required autho­riza­tion, and with the aid of oLIVE CLIMA this tech­nique was insti­tuted in Greece. 

At this point, Dora Paschali, an envi­ron­men­tal engi­neer at oLIVE CLIMA and at the Development Agency of Eastern Thessaloniki’s Local Authorities-ANATOLIKI SA, stressed that one of the main project goals was to free farm­ers from import­ing prod­ucts like nitroge­nous fer­til­iz­ers. ​“This cer­tainly made the cri­sis more suf­fer­able,” said Paschali. 

“It is not only farm­ers. Citizens and con­sumers have sensed cli­mate change on a more per­sonal level. They react, they take mea­sures, they adjust,” elab­o­rated Michalopoulos. And olive oil cul­ti­va­tion enters the equa­tion at this exact point. 

“In November 2016, the EU acknowl­edged that olive prod­ucts are the only food sta­ples in the world wor­thy of car­bon foot­print cred­its by the EU ​‘s Product Environmental Footprint (PEF),” Michalopoulos noted.

• oLIVE CLIMA Project