Olive groves alive
The olive grove forms a part of our story and is an unquestionable element of the landscape and cultural heritage of the Mediterranean since thousands of years ago. For the Greeks and Romans, it was a totemic tree, a symbol of immortality, peace, strength, victory and hope.
The olive grove is a strategic crop for recovering biodiversity; due to its characteristics as a permanent forest crop, due to its distribution across the breadth of the Mediterranean basin (the main hot point for biodiversity in Europe), and due to its status as a native plant of the Mediterranean environment.
In addition, it surrounds the main Protected Natural Spaces, and can act as a large ecological corridor between these spaces.
From Andalusia to the world
Objectives of the project
- Using scientific bases, define an innovative olive growing model with high demonstrational value, viable from an agronomic, economic and social standpoint, which contributes to halting biodiversity loss in the EU up to 2020 in an effective and proven manner.
- Establish olive growing profitability formulas based on an added value that is visible to consumers (biodiversity), which contribute to halting the abandonment of the traditional olive grove or re-intensifying it, avoiding environmental costs (erosions, carbon footprint, pollution, excessive use of water and loss of biodiversity).
Quality guarantee stamp
The Olivares Vivos Certification
All products derived from the live olive groves project meet a series of requirements for the conservation of biodiversity and the generation of greater added value, producing oils of genuine quality.
Alive olive groves protection measures
Measures to improve herbaceous cover
Change to management through mechanical clearing, punctual sowing of species of interest for pollinators
Measures to restore unproductive areas
In degraded areas after its natural vegetation has been eliminated, such as boundaries, roadsides, slopes, temporary stream margins, old herrizas or padrones, they have been carried out fundamentally by recovering the natural vegetation in those areas, having planted more than 30,000 specimens of Mediterranean woody species.
Actions to incorporate support structures for fauna
This includes incorporating nesting boxes for birds and insects, shelters for bats, drinking troughs, ponds for amphibians, perch-posts for birds of prey or artificial islands in irrigation ponds
Fauna process of certification
Thanks to the results obtained, the certification regulation that will regulate the adhesion of new farms to the project is currently being developed, establishing that it is necessary to take the measures of living olive groves to recover biodiversity, and thus obtain the seal of quality and certification.