`Confronting Soil Erosion in Andalusia - Olive Oil Times
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Confronting Soil Erosion in Andalusia

By Julie Butler
Mar. 3, 2011 11:15 UTC

Soil ero­sion con­tin­ues to be a grave prob­lem in Andalusia, the Spanish and world cap­i­tal of olive oil pro­duc­tion. Members of the olive oil indus­try are meet­ing there today, March 3rd, in Jaén to dis­cuss con­ser­va­tion mea­sures.

Jaén’s clay-rich soil is the most prone to rain­fall run-off- Manuel Ruiz

Biologist Manuel Ruiz, who is coor­di­nat­ing the work­shop, said it was esti­mated that 80 tons of soil per hectare were being lost each year due to the ero­sion in Andalusia, in south-east­ern Spain. ​“That’s equiv­a­lent to about four truck­loads of soil for every 100 olive trees.”

After cli­mate change, it’s the biggest envi­ron­men­tal prob­lem fac­ing the indus­try. In Jaén alone, the global heart of olive-pro­duc­tion, about a fifth of arable land is badly affected.

Dr. Ruiz, pres­i­dent of the Jaén branch of GEA (Active Ecology Group) , said the work­shop was intended to help mem­bers of the sec­tor learn what pre­ven­tive mea­sures could be taken and why they were impor­tant.

“The mea­sures require above all a change of men­tal­ity — to take ero­sion seri­ously and change some habits. This may mean learn­ing new tech­niques and invest­ing in machin­ery or hir­ing out­side exper­tise. We need to ensure the knowl­edge trans­fer of new crop man­age­ment tech­niques to farm­ers.

Dr. Ruiz said among the best ways to con­serve soil was to avoid or elim­i­nate tillage (instead using her­bi­cides to remove weeds), reduce the amount of time the ground was left bare, and to use plant ground cover, whether native or not, between rows of olive trees. ​“In itself, the ben­e­fits of using plant cover would off­set the invest­ment.”

Parts of Jaén with sloped ter­rain and clay-rich soil (which becomes com­pacted under the weight of farm machin­ery, imped­ing drainage) are those most prone to ero­sion by rain­fall run-off, he said.

In their 2007 research paper, ​“Is soil ero­sion in olive groves as bad as often claimed?”, authors Luuk Fleskens and Leo Stroosnijder warned against tak­ing an alarmist view and sug­gested that ero­sion rates were being over-esti­mated. They also said that the ero­sion mainly resulted from infre­quent high inten­sity rain­fall events and that in some cases, depend­ing on loca­tion, tillage applied judi­ciously in a grove might reduce ero­sion.

They said their results sug­gest that aver­age soil ero­sion rates are unlikely to sur­pass 10 tons a hectare a year. ​“Which is still more than the soil renewal by weath­er­ing.”

Nevertheless the prob­lem is of great con­cern and today’s free infor­ma­tion ses­sion in Jaén is being attended by rep­re­sen­ta­tives of rural and envi­ron­men­tal groups, includ­ing COAG-Jaén, one of Spain’s largest agrar­ian unions. Gregorio López, COAG’s olive sec­tor spokesman, said that the indus­try is increas­ingly pro-active on the issue of soil con­ser­va­tion. Nevertheless, peri­ods of extremely heavy rain in the last two years have taken their toll.

Although another cost at a time when the sec­tor is already strug­gling to make a profit, plant cover, for instance, is becom­ing more widely used and once estab­lished is not so expen­sive to main­tain, he said.

Meanwhile, a del­e­ga­tion of farm­ers and ranch­ers from Nebraska is cur­rently vis­it­ing Andalusia to learn about its sus­tain­able agri­cul­ture and exchange ideas. As part of the LEAD Program, an agri­cul­tural lead­er­ship devel­op­ment ini­tia­tive, they have vis­ited loca­tions this week includ­ing an organic olive grove and an olive mill.

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