Celebrated Sicilian Farmer Preserves Taditional Landscapes, Cultivars

In Buccheri, the high­est vil­lage in Sicily’s Hyblaean Mountains, mil­lenary olive trees stand out impos­ingly as ances­tral guardians of the ter­ri­tory home to Agrestis.

“Our orchards are mainly com­posed of cen­turies-old trees, with sev­eral of them prob­a­bly dat­ing back over a thou­sand years,” said co-owner Pietro Nicotra.

Agrestis was founded in 2003 in the south­east­ern cor­ner of Sicily by Nicotra’s father, Lorenzo, and his friend, Giuseppe Paparone. The com­pany aims to pur­sue qual­ity and high­light the autochtho­nous olive vari­ety Tonda Iblea.

“Our olive trees are scat­tered on these steep slopes accord­ing to an exten­sive, uneven plant­ing pat­tern,” Nicotra said. ​“In spring, the spac­ings between them become blos­som­ing mead­ows. The organic man­age­ment allows us to keep the groves healthy, thriv­ing and rich in bio­di­ver­sity.”

Once con­sumed pri­mar­ily as a table olive, Tonda Iblea is increas­ingly used to pro­duce award-win­ning extra vir­gin olive oil.

One of these is Agrestis Fiore d’Oro DOP, a mono­va­ri­etal that has won five Gold Awards at the NYIOOC World Olive Oil Competition, thanks to its com­plex pro­file. Its green tomato, apple, and bal­samic scents melt with notes of fava beans, aspara­gus, cel­ery and basil.

“Agrestis was among the first com­pa­nies in the area to carry out an early har­vest,” Nicotra said. ​“Consider that here, in the past, by tra­di­tion, the har­vest started on December 8 [Immaculate Conception Day, a pub­lic hol­i­day in Italy].”

“When we were kids, we helped our par­ents to col­lect the olives dur­ing Christmas hol­i­days,” he added. ​“They started har­vest­ing in November, then in October, and now we pick the first fruit in late September.”

Today, Nicotra man­ages the farm with his sis­ter, Julia, father and Salvatore Paparone, son of the company’s co-founder. Julia joined the team two years ago and over­sees the company’s com­mu­ni­ca­tion.

“Julia and I are bilin­gual thanks to our mother, Rosa, who is from Germany, and this prompted me to attend a lin­guis­tic high school,” Nicotra said. ​“Then, I earned a mas­ter’s degree in busi­ness eco­nom­ics while Salvatore stud­ied food sci­ence and tech­nol­ogy. Having dif­fer­ent edu­ca­tional back­grounds, we use our own skills in a spe­cific area of the com­pany.”

A team of field work­ers sup­ports the team all year round. During a good har­vest sea­son, up to 30 peo­ple are employed to col­lect the fruit of 20,000 trees. The groves stretch over 120 hectares, which the com­pany partly owns and partly rents.

“We do not know who planted our olive trees,” Nicotra said. ​“I heard a leg­end about the Greeks, who arrived by ships, since the val­ley where the orchards are now located was a nav­i­ga­ble river, found wild olive trees on its banks and domes­ti­cated them. However, this sug­gests that the olive cul­ti­va­tion was spread by the ancient pop­u­la­tions that set­tled in this area.”

Further back, mil­lions of years ago, the Hyblaean Mountains were a sub­ma­rine vol­canic com­plex formed by tec­tonic uplift. This resulted in fer­tile ground, where today, olive trees thrive at an alti­tude between 600 and 700 meters.

The ancient trees’ exten­sive roots can absorb water from deep soil lay­ers, mak­ing them resilient to long peri­ods of drought on the island.

“These old olive trees do not need to be irri­gated, and in any case, it is not pos­si­ble to set up an irri­ga­tion sys­tem due to the irreg­u­lar arrange­ment of the old orchards,” Nicotra said. ​“However, lately, they have strug­gled more with the pro­longed water stress.”

“Indeed, we had to cope with the effects of cli­mate change, which led to a lower pro­duc­tion for two con­sec­u­tive years,” he added.

The Sicilian farmer said that the most sig­nif­i­cant prob­lems occurred dur­ing the olive flow­er­ing period, gen­er­ally the most del­i­cate phase of the tree’s life cycle.

“We quickly passed from frigid win­ter tem­per­a­tures to extreme heat and mug­gi­ness, like there was no spring,” Nicotra said. ​“Here in the moun­tains, we have humid nights with frost, and if the morn­ing tem­per­a­ture reaches 28 ºC to 30 ºC, it eas­ily burns the flow­ers, which hap­pened last year.”

Furthermore, Nicotra said that due to its vari­etal char­ac­ter­is­tics, Tonda Iblea needs ideal cli­matic con­di­tions for good pol­li­na­tion. To facil­i­tate this process, the ancient peas­ants planted pol­li­nat­ing vari­eties beside it, such as Biancolilla, Nocellara and the locally called Oliva Lunga, which Agrestis now uses to cre­ate blends.

The com­pany relies on a mill in the nearby city of Ragusa to trans­form the fruits within hours of pick­ing them. The mil­l’s cut­ting-edge machin­ery allows for opti­mal extrac­tion of the six extra vir­gin olive oils Agrestis pro­duces. A few of these are cer­ti­fied with the Monti Iblei Protected Designation of Origin (PDO) and the Sicilia Protected Geographical Indication (PGI).

“Due to the drop in pro­duc­tion, the last har­vest required fewer work­ers and con­cluded ear­lier,” Nicotra said. ​“In early December, we picked the last fruits to be processed for the table olives. In the sum­mer, we mon­i­tor all the plants, and based on how much fruit they bear, we decide which ones to set aside for this pur­pose.”

In addi­tion to pro­cess­ing olives in brine, the com­pany has revived an ancient dry salt­ing method called ​‘Passuluna.’ This method involves putting the fruits in bar­rels with salt and con­tin­u­ously turn­ing them for a month. The result is an intensely fla­vored prod­uct.

“Our goal is not only to pro­duce high-qual­ity extra vir­gin olive oils and olives but also to safe­guard these ancient groves and their ter­ri­tory,” Nicotra said. ​“Let me say that our busi­ness is a mat­ter of pre­serv­ing this land.”

He explained that in the past, each fam­ily in this small moun­tain vil­lage looked after its own orchard, but nowa­days, many plots have been aban­doned due to the lack of gen­er­a­tional change. Since its estab­lish­ment, the com­pany has rented or pur­chased aban­doned and semi-aban­doned orchards to revive them.

“With our work, we keep the orchards clean, pre­vent­ing wild­fires and reduc­ing hydro­ge­o­log­i­cal risks,” Nicotra said. ​“In the sum­mer, when the tem­per­a­ture is very high, a wild­fire may spread eas­ier if fields are filled with over­grown grass and bushes, and a small blaze can destroy an olive tree that has been there for cen­turies in a moment.”

“Then, when the land is burned, and plants are no longer sup­port­ing it with their roots, mud­slides can eas­ily occur after tor­ren­tial rain,” he added. ​“It is well estab­lished that this sit­u­a­tion is exac­er­bated by cli­mate change. Our goal is to carry out sus­tain­able olive farm­ing, which, based on sci­en­tific evi­dence, helps tackle it.”

When the team recov­ers an olive grove, neglected plants are usu­ally sub­jected to reform prun­ing, which involves cut­ting off the main branches. This implies a wait­ing period of sev­eral years before new shoots start sprout­ing and the olive trees pro­duce fruits again.

“Working on this slop­ing land requires more effort and dri­ves up pro­duc­tion costs,” Nicotra said. ​“This adds to the cli­mate issues we are fac­ing and the con­se­quent drop in pro­duc­tion in the last few years. And yet, this doesn’t stop us from advanc­ing on our path and improv­ing our­selves, striv­ing to do our best even in this dif­fi­cult period for olive farm­ing.”

He men­tioned the com­ments of some vis­i­tors impressed by his team’s tenac­ity in work­ing while pur­su­ing qual­ity in such a chal­leng­ing con­text.

“Some time ago, at the end of a field visit, an expe­ri­enced agron­o­mist told me that we ​‘should be paid to con­tinue work­ing here’ since, in his opin­ion, it is not eco­nom­i­cally fea­si­ble,” Nicotra said. ​“He called us crazy, as he won­dered how we could cul­ti­vate these plots and still be a flour­ish­ing com­pany.”

“And still we con­tinue, with pas­sion and com­mit­ment, to make this work, which is giv­ing us so many sat­is­fac­tions,” he con­cluded. ​“Our prod­ucts are widely appre­ci­ated, and our cus­tomers know that the qual­ity we offer goes hand in hand with our com­mit­ment to pro­tect­ing these ancient olive trees and their envi­ron­ment, which are a true her­itage of all.”