The European project Soil O-Live and Deoleo, the multinational olive oil company, have held two training sessions to instruct and inform farmers on the implementation of sustainable practices in their olive groves and soil care.
The first workshop took place on Tuesday, 9 April, at the SCA Vera Cruz in Villanueva del Arzobispo, an entity belonging to Jaencoop. Jesús Rubio Villanueva and Bartolomé Lara from Deoleo explained the Soil O-Live sustainability protocol to the more than 50 farmers present. Toñi Fernández Hernández, production director of the Jaencoop group, Juan Martos Lorite, president of API Projaén and José Manuel Medina, Jaencoop technician, discussed topics such as rural depopulation, the LivingSoil project of the University of Jaén and JaenCoop, and the past, present and future of the CAP.
On Thursday, 11 April, the training day took place at Aceites Sierra de Yeguas in the town of the same name in Malaga. The inauguration was attended by the mayor of the town, Miguel Ángel Sánchez Jiménez, the councillor for Agriculture and the Environment, Miguel Ángel Martín Correro, the president of the host cooperative, Carlos Manuel Torres, and the manager, Eduardo Vega Leiva. Bartolomé Lara, from Deoleo, was in charge of speaking to around 50 attendees about the sustainability protocol and plant cover and Víctor Valenzuela, a researcher from the European Soil O-Live project, explained the fundamentals of soil health and the impact of agricultural practices on it.
These two actions are part of a programme of 14 days that will be held in different locations in Spain, Italy and Portugal. This week they will take place in the SCA San Juan de la Cruz de Beas de Segura and in the SCA San Juan Bautista de Peñolite, both entities belonging to Jaencoop.
In last year’s edition, more than 600 farmers already had the opportunity to learn about the importance of soil care for the maintenance of the tree and the quality of olive oil through this project 100% financed by the European Union. Precisely, one of the objectives of Soil O-Live is to study the effect of agricultural management on the general state of health of soils in Mediterranean olive groves, as well as its impact on the production and quality of olive oils produced in the Mediterranean region.