Initiative in Italy to Restore Olive Cultivation in The Apennines

Twenty-five thou­sand hectares of olive groves located on the slopes of the Italian Apennine Mountains could be restored to pro­duc­tion in a mat­ter of years, revers­ing a long-run­ning trend of aban­don­ment.

According to the Italian National Olive Tree and Olive Oil Academy, restor­ing 5,000 hectares of olive orchards in a moun­tain­ous region such as Abruzzo could fos­ter a 40 per­cent increase in regional annual olive oil pro­duc­tion.

The rel­a­tively low moun­tain range, which spans more than 1,200 kilo­me­ters, is home to 207,000 hectares of olive groves. They rep­re­sent approx­i­mately 21 per­cent of Italy’s olive cul­ti­va­tion sur­face area.

During a recent national meet­ing in Casoli, Abruzzo, hun­dreds of experts, researchers, pro­fes­sors, agron­o­mists, econ­o­mists, entre­pre­neurs and pub­lic offi­cials focused on reviv­ing the Apennine olive grow­ing tra­di­tion.

Given the high vol­umes of olive oil con­sump­tion in Italy and the trend of shrink­ing Italian olive oil pro­duc­tion, the acad­emy noted how sig­nif­i­cant such an ini­tia­tive could be.

According to the International Olive Council, Italy will con­sume more than 486,000 tons of olive oil in the 2022/23 crop year, more than any other coun­try. However, national pro­duc­tion only reached 235,000 tons in the last sea­son.

Academy data showed that in 2022, Italian olive oil pro­duc­tion accounted for less than 48 per­cent of domes­tic con­sump­tion, lower than any pre­vi­ous record. The shrink­ing yields also affect the national olive oil trade bal­ance, as imports exceeded €2.2 bil­lion while exports reached €1.9 bil­lion.

“Much of the agri­cul­ture in the Apennines can be restored, improved and made more pro­duc­tive, and pro­duc­tion costs could be low­ered,” Riccardo Gucci, pro­fes­sor for the agri­science depart­ment at the University of Pisa and the academy’s pres­i­dent, told Olive Oil Times.

“That can hap­pen, and it is already hap­pen­ing in some areas, where pub­lic ini­tia­tives sus­tain the devel­op­ment of olive farms and the strength­en­ing of the exist­ing ones,” he added. ​“Not all the tra­di­tional olive grow­ing in those areas can be recov­ered. Still, a part of it might improve.”

Elena Sico, direc­tor of Abruzzo’s regional agri­cul­ture depart­ment, said dur­ing the meet­ing that new funds are being planned to sus­tain the fur­ther devel­op­ment of exist­ing farms. European and regional funds are focused on upgrad­ing olive mills and improv­ing stor­age and bot­tling oper­a­tions.

“We raised pub­lic fund­ing to 65 per­cent for those oper­a­tions,” she said. ​“We are also wait­ing for the go-ahead from the national Ministry [of Agriculture] to sup­port up to 80 per­cent of their invest­ments in the younger oper­a­tors start­ing their activ­ity,” she said.

However, chal­lenges abound. ​“Many olive orchards in the rural areas of the Apennines are not cul­ti­vated by farms or com­pa­nies. Most of the time, it is local fam­i­lies own­ing small or very small olive groves,” Gucci said.

“That also means that those fam­ily orchards, which might need costly restor­ing oper­a­tions, fall out­side the scope of the devel­op­ment pro­grams, which are meant to sus­tain com­pa­nies, not fam­i­lies,” he added.

While many local admin­is­tra­tions in the last decades have deployed pub­lic ten­ders and funds to encour­age more young olive farm­ers to start busi­nesses, the mea­sures have not stopped the trend of aban­doned olive groves.

“Even gen­er­ous ini­tia­tives such as giv­ing away large pieces of agri­cul­tural land to young farm­ers wish­ing to install in the rural vil­lages were not sig­nif­i­cantly suc­cess­ful,” Gucci said.

According to Gucci, the labor short­age impact­ing the Italian agri­cul­tural sec­tor demon­strates that dif­fer­ent areas of oppor­tu­nity often attract the younger gen­er­a­tions.

“It is not just a ques­tion of eco­nom­ics,” he said. ​“It also depends on the social con­text; some­times they shun fatigue-inten­sive activ­i­ties; they look for free­dom.”

As the num­ber of res­i­dents in most of the Apennines con­tin­ued to fall over the last few decades, the pres­ence of ter­ri­to­r­ial ser­vices and local insti­tu­tions decreased, which led to fur­ther aban­don­ment of those areas by the younger gen­er­a­tions.

To reverse that, Gucci envi­sioned a new approach to rural areas often bur­dened by old infra­struc­tures.

“How can you ask young farm­ers to change their lives and invest in rural areas where they do not have an inter­net con­nec­tion, where they would not know how to get their kids to school, where there are no oppor­tu­ni­ties for intense social inter­ac­tion?” Gucci asked.

He said plenty could be done to help rural areas decon­gest cities and improve the qual­ity of life of many.

“There are so many com­pa­nies and pro­fes­sion­als work­ing remotely nowa­days; think of a mechan­i­cal engi­neer or a pro­gram­mer who does not need to go to a com­pany cam­pus in the city every day,” Gucci said. ​“Just like young farm­ers, they could see the oppor­tu­nity to improve the qual­ity of their lives in revamped and mod­ern­ized vil­lages.”

He noted how research cen­ters and uni­ver­si­ties do not need large cities. ​“Universities are increas­ingly locat­ing their cam­puses in areas that need to be regen­er­ated, such as aban­doned indus­trial areas,” Gucci said. ​“They could also be part of a dif­fer­ent approach to rural areas 50 or 100 kilo­me­ters away from the city.”

Gucci stressed how even minor reforms could pro­vide a rel­e­vant out­come. ​“For instance, we could pro­vide a ded­i­cated tax regime to olive orchard own­ers who are not a com­pany, not a farm, but take care or could take care of their land,” he said.

According to Gucci, these olive tree own­ers in the Apennines should be able to deduct the costs of main­tain­ing an olive tree ter­race in their fields from their taxes.

“Such deduc­tions are already pro­vided for a num­ber of upgrades that can be done to houses, such as installing a more sus­tain­able cen­tral heat­ing unit,” he said. ​“But we do not have any­thing like that yet if one main­tains dry walls or ter­races for olive trees.”

“That would sus­tain the main­te­nance oper­a­tions, stim­u­late the local econ­omy by giv­ing new oppor­tu­ni­ties to small repair com­pa­nies, and in the long run, would even mean more taxes for the state,” he added.

According to Gucci, the future of olive farm­ing and agri­cul­ture in the Apennines requires invest­ment in local infra­struc­ture and incen­tives to keep agri­cul­tural land in a pro­duc­tive state.

“Today, it is pos­si­ble to bring back pop­u­la­tion in sig­nif­i­cant num­bers in those vil­lages, where the qual­ity of life would imme­di­ately improve,” he said. ​“It does not mean pur­su­ing a bucolic idea of agri­cul­ture deprived of mod­ern infra­struc­tures.”

“We can­not con­sider the long-stand­ing tra­di­tion of olive grow­ing in those hills and moun­tains as we always did,” Gucci con­cluded. ​“Today, it is com­pletely up to the indi­vid­ual to assume all the costs and risks of main­tain­ing that tra­di­tion alive. This means to cul­ti­vate the past and at the same time to be con­fined in awk­ward back­ward­ness.”

• Italian National Olive Tree and Olive Oil Academy