Italy Pledges €30 Million to Small and Medium Producers

Officials in Italy have agreed to ear­mark €30 mil­lion to increase pro­duc­tiv­ity and olive oil qual­ity for small and medium farm­ers and pro­duc­ers.

The new funds will be pro­vided to grow­ers focused on sus­tain­able prac­tices and pro­tect­ing nat­ural resources.

The Stato-Regioni Conference, the entity that coor­di­nates national and regional poli­cies in Italy, has spec­i­fied that the funds to suc­cess­ful appli­cants will reach a max­i­mum of €25,000 each.

Overall, Italian olive oil yields have sub­stan­tially decreased in recent years. According to data from the International Olive Council, Italian olive oil pro­duc­tion has fallen from an aver­age of 645,000 tons per annum in the first five years of the 21^st cen­tury to just 280,000 tons in the past five har­vests.

The need to adapt to cli­mate change and opti­mize the use of essen­tial resources, such as water, has often been cited by farm­ing asso­ci­a­tions as a strate­gic hur­dle. Unaprol, the Italian asso­ci­a­tion of olive oil pro­duc­ers, said that the new funds are included in a larger project to sus­tain and develop the farm­ing pro­duc­tion chain.

“The mod­ern­iza­tion of tra­di­tional orchards and the new plants will help Italy to boost its high-qual­ity pro­duc­tion, given that in the last 30 years the pro­duc­tion poten­tial has halved,” said Unaprol pres­i­dent David Granieri. ​“Our coun­try, which leads in qual­ity prod­ucts, has the need to increase yields to face the ever-grow­ing com­pet­i­tive strength of the other pro­duc­ing coun­tries.”

The Stato-Regioni Conference has also given the green light to the applica­tive mea­sures of the recent oleo­tourism law, which should speed up its adop­tion in each region.

Many ini­tia­tives have already seen the light or are being planned through­out the coun­try under the umbrella of the new leg­is­la­tion, with the goal of sup­port­ing farm­ers’ income and pro­mot­ing sus­tain­abil­ity, qual­ity and olive oil cul­ture.

“The new oleo­tourism imple­ment decree will finally make it pos­si­ble to con­nect the his­tor­i­cal and archi­tec­ton­ics beau­ties of our coun­try to the val­oriza­tion of one of the sym­bols of the Made in Italy,” Granieri con­cluded. ​“We now expect the sin­gle regions to quickly adopt the new rules in order to let the olive oil ter­ri­to­ries develop this new extra­or­di­nary oppor­tu­nity.”

• Unaprol