Safeguarding Unique Olive Farming Traditions on Italy’s Pantelleria Island

Olive farm­ing has unique char­ac­ter­is­tics on the Sicilian island of Pantelleria, the Italian region clos­est to Africa.

The olive tree is cul­ti­vated accord­ing to a par­tic­u­lar sys­tem, which induces its hor­i­zon­tal growth.

The sys­tem pre­vents the trees’ height from exceed­ing that of the adja­cent dry stone wall, enabling the trees to opti­mize their water use and cope with wind.

For cen­turies, this agri­cul­tural prac­tice has allowed olive tree cul­ti­va­tion and olive oil pro­duc­tion in the vol­canic island’s extreme cli­mate, char­ac­ter­ized by dry­ness and storms.

This olive tree-grow­ing sys­tem is at risk of fad­ing due to the lack of gen­er­a­tional turnover.

The Resilea asso­ci­a­tion, whose goals include recon­struct­ing and strength­en­ing local com­mu­ni­ties, col­lab­o­rates with the University of Palermo to pre­serve and dis­sem­i­nate the knowl­edge sys­tem behind this farm­ing prac­tice, also known as ​“The art of Pantelleria’s pros­trate (or creep­ing) olive tree.”

“After work­ing for sev­eral years in devel­op­ing coun­tries, we set­tled in Italy, in Pantelleria, in 2013, intend­ing to pre­serve the knowl­edge under­pin­ning this method of adap­ta­tion to the local envi­ron­ment devised ages ago by the island’s grow­ers,” Gianpaolo Rampini, Resilea’s pres­i­dent, told Olive Oil Times.

During his work abroad, Rampini said the dis­ap­pear­ance of rural com­mu­ni­ties and their cul­tures glob­ally is a sig­nif­i­cant threat to cul­tural diver­sity.

“Our goal is to safe­guard the set of non-writ­ten the­o­ret­i­cal and prac­ti­cal ele­ments, defined by research as local eco­log­i­cal knowl­edge, which is the cor­ner­stone of rural com­mu­ni­ties,” he said.

Pantelleria’s olive tree prun­ing and train­ing sys­tem involves dry farm­ing tech­niques. It pre­vents the effects of ​‘mat­ti­cate,’ a word from the local dialect that refers to strong gusts of wind blow­ing from the sea inland dur­ing storms.

“This cli­mate resilient prac­tice emerges today as an ele­ment of inter­est in the frame­work of ongo­ing cli­mate change,” Rampini said. ​“It became nec­es­sary in the past, since the island had no lakes and rivers and not even a water desali­na­tion plant like today, and each inhab­i­tant col­lected the rain­wa­ter through the roof of their ​‘dammuso,’ the island’s tra­di­tional house.”

“The lim­ited water sup­ply made it dif­fi­cult or even impos­si­ble to carry out tra­di­tional olive farm­ing,” he added.

The prac­tice ini­tially con­sists of forc­ing the branches of newly planted or very young olive trees toward the ground, using ropes and stones until they acquire the hor­i­zon­tal direc­tion.

As the new shoots sprout, those grow­ing upwards must be pruned, while those grow­ing down­wards are left to grow.

“Some believe that it is nec­es­sary to leave shoots to grow all along the main branches, while oth­ers leave shoots only on the main branches’ final por­tion,” Rampini said.

“These vari­a­tions are part of the wealth of infor­ma­tion that Resilea and the University of Palermo aim to col­lect and trans­mit to the new gen­er­a­tions through­out a project cur­rently under­way,” he added. ​“It is giv­ing us great sat­is­fac­tion, as the stu­dents involved are enthu­si­as­tic and are learn­ing quickly.”

Based on a mul­ti­dis­ci­pli­nary and expe­ri­en­tial approach, stu­dents aged ten to 17 learn the olive farm­ing tech­nique from elderly grow­ers, with the sup­port of the uni­ver­sity team that col­lects the infor­ma­tion.

Supervisors draw reports and pro­duce doc­u­men­taries dur­ing field activ­i­ties ded­i­cated to those in the final high school year.

“The stu­dents imme­di­ately under­stand this is a pecu­liar agri­cul­tural con­text, shaped by ter­races and dry stone walls, and that the pros­trate olive trees are embed­ded in it,” said Antonio Motisi, a pro­fes­sor of arbori­cul­ture at the University of Palermo and project coor­di­na­tor.

“Indeed, we can­not think about the olive tree and the other tree species on the island with­out tak­ing into account the pres­ence of the dry stone walls,” he added.

Pantelleria is dot­ted with ter­races defined by dry walls, which have been built over cen­turies with vol­canic stones removed from the ground to make it cul­tivable.

Along with Pantesco’s gar­den, an enclo­sure used to cul­ti­vate cit­rus fruits, and the dammuso, both made of stone, the dry wall is emblem­atic of the local archi­tec­ture.

“Essentially, a small cli­matic micro­cosm is formed by the one-meter wall that bounds the ter­race and the olive tree within its height,” Motisi said. ​“We do not know any com­pa­ra­ble olive cul­ti­va­tion type in the Mediterranean.”

Most of the olive trees are Biancolilla, and some vari­eties, prob­a­bly also from Tunisia, are yet to be iden­ti­fied.

Pruning is done in win­ter and sum­mer and plays a key role in the olive farm­ing sys­tem. Unlike con­ven­tional prun­ing meth­ods, this tech­nique excludes return cuts.

The aim is to avoid undue water stress on the olive tree when devel­op­ing new shoots.

“After con­ven­tional prun­ing is per­formed, vig­or­ous shoots and suck­ers emerge,” Motisi said. ​“In this case, instead, the wood of the main branches is left to age pre­cisely to con­tain that vig­or­ous devel­op­ment and to pre­vent the plant from being in dis­tress dur­ing sum­mer. And this fos­ters the plant’s flow­er­ing and fruit set­ting.”

Due to the tree’s hor­i­zon­tal devel­op­ment, a pecu­liar train­ing sys­tem is required. The main branches are left to grow long, and when they are about to touch the ground, a stone is placed between the wood and soil to avoid con­tact.

In con­trast, the branches of very large trees can often be encour­aged to touch the ground and take root to rein­vig­o­rate them­selves.

“In this case, when a branch reaches a cer­tain length, like four or five meters, the por­tion that touches the soil shall be buried, so that a new root takes hold in the under­ground point and revi­tal­izes the branch as it con­tin­ues to grow,” Motisi explained.

In its 85 square kilo­me­ters, Pantelleria includes an 836-meter-tall moun­tain and var­i­ous pedo­cli­matic con­di­tions to which farm­ers have adapted. Depending on the area, dif­fer­ent prun­ing and train­ing approaches are used.

“The gen­eral rule includes sev­eral excep­tions,” Rampini said. ​“For exam­ple, in Sibà, one of the high­est dis­tricts, some plants have spi­ral-shaped branches, which prob­a­bly allowed farm­ers to gain space. The olive trees are 150 square meters in other areas, some­times extend­ing over more ter­races.”

The large canopies cover the ter­race sur­face, pro­tect­ing the soil from inso­la­tion and lim­it­ing mois­ture evap­o­ra­tion, reduc­ing water con­sump­tion.

“In this con­text, every­thing aims to reduce the tree’s water use,” Motisi said. ​“The dry stone wall also plays a role, as it mit­i­gates the effect of wind by slow­ing down the air stream and con­se­quently lim­it­ing the water losses due to tran­spi­ra­tion.”

”Also, it prob­a­bly induces micro­cli­matic dynam­ics that favor the con­den­sa­tion of humid­ity in the air, a very com­plex aspect we are inves­ti­gat­ing,” he added.

According to avail­able data, Pantelleria’s cul­ti­vated sur­face area fell from more than 80 per­cent in the mid­dle of the last cen­tury to less than 20 per­cent today, sug­gest­ing many neglected orchards.

Resilea has been com­mit­ted to recov­er­ing aban­doned olive groves and pro­duc­ing extra vir­gin olive oil for sev­eral years. Now, the asso­ci­a­tion is plan­ning to cre­ate a com­mu­nity com­pany.

“We believe that an eco­nomic income for the small pro­duc­ers on the island is nec­es­sary to bet­ter pro­tect these trees, many of which are cen­turies-old, and this sus­tain­able and resilient farm­ing prac­tice,” Rampini said. ​“Working in such a par­tic­u­lar envi­ron­ment requires much effort and high costs, as mechan­i­cal means can­not be used and every­thing is done by hand.”

“Our goal is to make this prac­tice eco­nom­i­cally sus­tain­able, allow­ing pro­duc­ers to super­vise the whole pro­duc­tive chain,” he added.

The trans­porta­tion of the olives, which are sent by ship to Trapani, Sicily, within hours of being picked and crushed in a local mill, also cre­ates extra costs.

Farmers on the island are also at risk if the ferry is can­celed for days due to bad weather, delay­ing fruit deliv­ery and reduc­ing qual­ity.

Resilea’s plan involves build­ing a com­pany-owned milling facil­ity to pre­vent these issues and ensure increased func­tion­al­ity.

“There is a good mill in Pantelleria, but we need dif­fer­ent equip­ment for our pur­pose,” Rampini said. ​“We seek to set up a state-of-the-art two-phase tech­nol­ogy that can work well with small vol­umes of olives, com­bined with a stor­age facil­ity, a bot­tling machin­ery and a byprod­uct reuse sys­tem.”

With the value of sus­tain­abil­ity at its core and the ambi­tion of being com­pre­hen­sive, the project includes a research com­po­nent.

“We are act­ing in accor­dance with the cir­cu­lar econ­omy prin­ci­ples,” Rampini said. ​“Among the play­ers work­ing to cre­ate the com­mu­nity com­pany is PlantaRei Biotech, a startup directed by Elena Sgaravatti focused on high value-added prod­ucts from pro­duc­tion waste. It is cur­rently study­ing the olive leaves of these trees for the extrac­tion of polyphe­nols.”

“We are glad to say that the local pub­lic insti­tu­tions are sup­port­ing our project,” he con­cluded. ​“We can pro­duce high-qual­ity extra vir­gin olive oil, con­tribut­ing to sus­tain­able devel­op­ment. Revenues from sales will be rein­vested to empower the small pro­duc­ers and to safe­guard such a valu­able land­scape, envi­ron­men­tal and cul­tural her­itage.”