The Trials and Triumphs of Organic Olive Farming in Andalusia

Organic olive farm­ing is the past, present and future at Luque Ecológico.

The fifth-gen­er­a­tion fam­ily com­pany has 300 hectares of organic olive groves at sev­eral dif­fer­ent farms between Córdoba and Granada in the south­ern Spanish region of Andalusia.

“Our com­pany has been in organic farm­ing since the late 1980s, so all of our projects have always been ori­ented towards qual­ity and the envi­ron­ment,” said Rafael Gálvez, a for­mally trained agron­o­mist and the company’s sales and qual­ity man­ager.

Despite the many chal­lenges asso­ci­ated with organic farm­ing, the team behind Luque Ecológico sees sus­tain­able agri­cul­tural and milling prac­tices as the best way to achieve out­stand­ing qual­ity and mit­i­gate the increas­ingly appar­ent impacts of cli­mate change in south­ern Spain.

“Organic farm­ers are always look­ing for a bal­ance in the ecosys­tem,” Gálvez said. The com­pa­ny’s goal is for every­thing it does in its olive groves to ben­e­fit the trees and envi­ron­ment.

“We have had green cover plants for 30 years,” Gálvez said. ​“Pruning remains are also incor­po­rated into the soil. The soil has to be alive. There has to be organic mat­ter, and there have to be microor­gan­isms that, in turn, make it eas­ier for what­ever nutri­ents there are to be trans­ferred to the crop.”

He added, ​“We also try to ensure that the aux­il­iary fauna devel­ops in the olive grove’s green cover plants because this is how we con­trol pests.”

One of the main chal­lenges for organic farm­ers, Gálvez cited, is the need to be con­stantly vig­i­lant, aware of poten­tial prob­lems before they appear and pre­pared with tech­ni­cal solu­tions.

“It is vital to antic­i­pate prob­lems because then the solu­tions are not easy for organic farm­ing,” he said. ​“The solu­tions are not imme­di­ate. It is not a mat­ter of press­ing a but­ton or being able to apply a mag­i­cal prod­uct. So it’s always about improv­ing and main­tain­ing bal­ance.”

Along with pre­serv­ing the nat­ural envi­ron­ment, Gálvez believes that plant­ing aro­matic herbs and cover crops and improv­ing soil health influ­ences the organolep­tic char­ac­ter­is­tics of the company’s extra vir­gin olive oil.

“We believe this may influ­ence the organolep­tic char­ac­ter­is­tics,” he said. ​“There are no sci­en­tific stud­ies on this, but we think it does some­how affect these char­ac­ter­is­tics.”

The company’s efforts were rewarded for the ninth straight year at the 2024 NYIOOC World Olive Oil Competition. Luque Ecológico earned a Gold Award for its Take a Walk on the Organic Side brand, a medium Hojiblanca.

“Take a Walk on the Organic Side is a low-input project grown in an olive grove with min­i­mal fea­si­ble inputs,” Gálvez said.

Luque Ecológico’s olive groves are spread over three farms, each with native olive vari­eties and dif­fer­ent cul­ti­va­tion meth­ods. However, each project aims to achieve a high-qual­ity, healthy, fla­vor­ful prod­uct.

“Of course, it is very impor­tant for us that all the prod­ucts we put on the mar­ket are of the high­est qual­ity,” Gálvez said. ​“To achieve this, we have always been adapt­ing new tech­nolo­gies and new ways of obtain­ing oil in our mill.”

“We changed the ver­ti­cal cen­trifuges, which reduced water con­sump­tion by 50 per­cent,” he added. ​“That is good for the envi­ron­ment, but it is also good for the qual­ity, so the oil is not washed out too much, and polyphe­nols and antiox­i­dants are not lost.”

Along with organic prac­tices, Luque Ecológico focuses on an early har­vest to pre­serve the olives’ organolep­tic qual­i­ties and ensure the max­i­mum amount of polyphe­nols in the result­ing olive oil.

“We focus on an early har­vest so that they have more intense aro­mas,” Gálvez said. ​“The truth is that we don’t under­stand any other way to do it.”

He added that the mind­set sur­round­ing qual­ity has changed immensely over the five gen­er­a­tions his fam­ily has pro­duced olive oil.

“In the begin­ning, it was all about pro­duc­ing olive oil,” he said. ​“Nowadays, the goal is to sus­tain­ably pro­duce qual­ity extra vir­gin olive oil.”

The har­vest has also become more effi­cient over the years. ​“Previously, many labor­ers har­vested olives by hand, and mules hauled the olives to the mill,” Gálvez said. ​“Sometimes, the olives would stay in the field for a cou­ple of days before they were taken to the mill.”

“Since then, every­thing has changed; the first gen­er­a­tions were olive oil pro­duc­ers, and we are now extra vir­gin olive oil pro­duc­ers,” he added.

Gálvez said the men­tal­ity changed over the years from sell­ing bulk olive oil to be bot­tled by other com­pa­nies to pro­duc­ing a brand with attrac­tive pack­ag­ing and ver­ti­cally inte­grat­ing the entire process.

The company’s sales chan­nels have also changed. While pre­vi­ous gen­er­a­tions sold to local bot­tlers, Gálvez said Luque Ecológico now exports most of its organic extra vir­gin olive oil abroad.

“Due to our prod­ucts’ organic ori­gins, exports have been our main activ­ity from the begin­ning,” he said. ​“The national mar­ket was very low, and it is still very low, so exports are our main focus for our prod­uct.”

Luque Ecológico now exports to more than 20 coun­tries, includ­ing Australia, Canada, Japan, South Korea, the United Kingdom, the United States and other European coun­tries.

Gálvez attrib­utes increas­ing global demand for organic olive oil to improv­ing aware­ness of extra vir­gin olive oil’s health ben­e­fits and greater knowl­edge of how to use it effec­tively in var­i­ous cook­ing styles.

“The United States is one of the most inter­est­ing mar­kets, and we are repo­si­tion­ing the prod­uct there,” he said. “[Meanwhile, Japan and South Korea] are among the coun­tries that have been grow­ing the most lately.”

While Spanish olive oil pro­duc­tion rebounded to 846,800 tons in the 2023/24 crop year from the his­toric low of the pre­vi­ous har­vest, Gálvez said Luque Ecológico had not expe­ri­enced a pro­duc­tion increase.

“​We had two very tough years of drought, so we achieved around 50 per­cent of that of a nor­mal har­vest,” he said. However, not all vari­eties expe­ri­enced the same decreases, with Picual suf­fer­ing more than oth­ers.

Along with drought, Gálvez said the com­pany expe­ri­enced extreme swings in tem­per­a­ture at the moment of flow­er­ing, fur­ther ham­per­ing pro­duc­tion.

“Last year, we had three cli­matic con­di­tions: drought, high tem­per­a­ture dur­ing flow­er­ing and low tem­per­a­tures at the end of flow­er­ing,” he said. ​“We had a farm that expe­ri­enced frost and lost all the flow­ers and leaves from the trees… It was incred­i­ble; we had never seen a sit­u­a­tion quite like that.”

While Gálvez said there is not much pro­duc­ers can do to mit­i­gate the impacts of extreme tem­per­a­ture swings, organic prac­tices can help reduce the effects of the drought.

“When you have plant cov­ers, more mois­ture is main­tained in the soil,” he said. However, Gálvez added that if dry­land groves do not receive the min­i­mum amount of rain at cer­tain moments of the year, includ­ing the moment of flow­er­ing, then the trees still suf­fer.

While the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion in Andalusia promises a much stronger har­vest in the 2024/25 crop year than in pre­vi­ous ones due to rain, extreme tem­per­a­ture fluc­tu­a­tions could hurt the trees.

“The com­ing har­vest has high prospects,” Gálvez said. ​“It has rained a lot in the past month.”

Steady and con­sis­tent rain­fall has allowed the soil to trap mois­ture and fill reser­voirs and other bod­ies of water, which Luque Ecológico will rely on to irri­gate some of its groves dur­ing the sum­mer. Still, more rain is needed to ensure a suc­cess­ful har­vest.

“Now, it has to con­tinue rain­ing in spring with­out high tem­per­a­tures or frost,” Gálvez said. ​“Summer is still to come, and then it should rain again in the autumn. In other words, with this water, the entire crop cycle is not resolved.”