Blogpost: PREPSOIL Olive Tree Crops Soil Needs Workshop
On Friday, March 17th, 2023, at the Institute of Research in Olive Groves and Olive Oil (INUO) located in Jaén (Spain), the EU-funded project PREPSOIL celebrated a workshop about the soil health in olive groves. This workshop congregated different olive stakeholders (politicians, agricultural organizations, researchers and others) that discussed about the health of soils in olive tree plantations.
The first part of the workshop was dedicated to the introduction of different European projects: PREPSOIL, Sustainolive, Soil O-Live and “Olivares vivos”. Sustainolive, Soil-O-Live and Olivares vivos deal specifically with different problems during the sustainable production of olive oil, including soil health. The Platform SoilBio (web page under construction) of the CSIC was also introduced at this point, this platform agglutinates different CSIC research groups, industries and other collaborators working in different aspects of soil health.
During the second part of the workshop, different stakeholders closely linked with olive trees plantations, presented their vision about the main problems that olive tree farmers are facing and how soil conditions have been deteriorating in the last decades. We had the sustainability perspective in the management of olive trees plantations from the political point of view (Sonia Bermúdez, Responsible of the Sustainability Service in the Diputación Provincial of Jaén), and from DEOLEO, one of the main packers and commercialization companies of olive oil that have implemented a sustainability protocol from soil to consumer (presented by Juan Carrasco, the Global Sustainability Manager of Deoleo S.A.).
We also had the vision of the academic world through the presentation of Dr. Julio Antonio Calero of the University of Jaen. The view from the productive sector was represented by Cristóbal Cano, the general secretary of the Union of Small Producers (UPA) in Andalucía, by Nicolás Lupiañez, manager of the cooperative HABITAT AOVE and Miguel A. Gómez, specialist on Regenerative Agriculture of the Fundación ALAND, and the technical point of view from Laura Fernández and José Vera, field technicians of the Cooperative JAENCOOP. In their presentations, they made emphasis in the severity of the health soil problems in olive groves and gave their opinions about how to deal with them from education and awareness to implementation of certain practices.
After lunch, round tables with different composition of stakeholders (speakers and audience) debated over the problems and solutions for the health problems of olive tree groves. There was also discussion about the creation of Living Labs, the opportunity and the advantages of being part of this co-creation ecosystem. The debate´s conclusions and stakeholder’s opinions will be incorporated into the final reporting document that the PREPSOIL researchers and managers are carrying out analyzing the main soil needs in this region.