Meet the Ligurian Producer Defending a Cultural Heritage

Summary

Tèra de Prie, located in Liguria, cul­ti­vates Taggiasca olive trees on ter­raced orchards, main­tain­ing dry stone walls and tra­di­tional agri­cul­tural tech­niques to mit­i­gate cli­mate change effects. The com­pa­ny’s com­mit­ment to envi­ron­men­tal sus­tain­abil­ity and qual­ity pro­duc­tion has earned them recog­ni­tion, with a focus on pre­serv­ing a healthy envi­ron­ment for wildlife and pro­vid­ing a serene work envi­ron­ment for their col­lab­o­ra­tors.

Between alpine sum­mits and the Mediterranean coast, the Taggiasca olive tree has long thrived on the steep ter­rain of west­ern Liguria, becom­ing a dis­tin­guish­ing fea­ture of the land­scape.

On the foothills of Mount Guardiabella, an off­shoot of the Prealps, Tèra de Prie cul­ti­vates 4,500 trees scat­tered over 15 hectares of ter­raced orchards at 300 to 400 meters of alti­tude. 

The groves are located through­out the ham­lets of Aurigo, Borgomaro and a few other vil­lages of the Impero Valley, near Imperia.

“This area has always been rich in stones and trees,” co-owner Nicola Ferrarese told Olive Oil Times. ​“The first peo­ples who arrived here, the Ligurians and then the Romans, started using the tree wood to build their boats and col­lected the stones to cre­ate the ter­races, turn­ing a prob­lem into a resource.”

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Hence, the name of the com­pany, Tèra de Prie, which in the Ligurian lan­guage means ​‘land of stones’ or ​‘land made of stones.’ The com­pany logo depicts a styl­ized human fig­ure wield­ing a mag­a­glio, a local word indi­cat­ing a type of three-toothed hoe. It can be seen as a farmer hoe­ing, gear­ing up for the olive har­vest or strug­gling to fix a retain­ing wall.

The lat­ter image evokes the con­stant main­te­nance required by the ter­raced plots, whose slope gra­di­ent is at least 45 degrees. Every year, the com­pany restores between 180 and 200 square meters of dry stone walls on the prop­erty.

The result of this com­mit­ment towards the ter­ri­tory, shaped by a thou­sand years of heroic farm­ing, is Tèra de Prie Biologico Monocultivar Taggiasca, which earned a Gold Award at the 2025 NYIOOC World Olive Oil Competition.

“Our work of preser­va­tion has not only a his­tor­i­cal and cul­tural value – just con­sider that UNESCO rec­og­nized the art of dry stone walling as an Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity – but it also has other major impli­ca­tions,” Ferrarese said. 

“A good main­te­nance of the dry stone walls dras­ti­cally reduces the hydro­ge­o­log­i­cal risk,” he added. ​“Due to the impor­tance of this activ­ity, the European Union cov­ers part of the cost nec­es­sary for their restora­tion. However, well-done work always requires an extra amount of expense, as well as addi­tional efforts.”

The use of tra­di­tional agri­cul­tural tech­niques, such as dry-stone ter­races, is widely rec­og­nized as an adap­ta­tion mea­sure to mit­i­gate the effects of cli­mate change.

Despite E.U. funds, recovering of dry stone walls takes an enormous amount of time and money. (Photo: Tèra de Prie)

The E.U. man­ages fund­ing pro­grams, such as ​“Using Dry-Stone Walls as a Multi-pur­pose Climate Change Adaptation tool,” the goals of which are to restore and main­tain dry stone walls in a long-term man­ner, as they enable excel­lent water drainage and effec­tively min­i­mize the risk of land­slides and floods.

“Among their envi­ron­men­tal ben­e­fits, these walls pro­vide a spe­cific nat­ural ecosys­tem for many species,” Ferrarese said. ​“Moreover, they act as tem­per­a­ture reg­u­la­tors, cre­at­ing a micro­cli­mate, thanks to the stone’s abil­ity to store the heat of the sun and then to release it.”

Ferrarese man­ages the com­pany along­side his father, Franco, and last year, his wife, Sonia, joined the team to over­see mar­ket­ing and busi­ness ini­tia­tives. The cou­ple has two chil­dren, eight-year-old Andrea and six-year-old Francesca, who has already shown inter­est in the family’s com­mit­ment to olive pro­duc­tion.

“Every year, our kids are the first tasters of our extra vir­gin olive oil, and they love get­ting involved in the har­vest, which for them is an excit­ing expe­ri­ence,” Ferrarese said. ​“Speaking of the link between gen­er­a­tions, most of these lands have been passed down to us from our ances­tors. Both my mother’s and my father’s fam­i­lies were, in all like­li­hood, olive grow­ers since 1700.”

The ori­gins of their entre­pre­neur­ial ven­ture date back to the mid-1980s, when Franco Ferrarese began revi­tal­iz­ing an aban­doned olive grove.

“He then recov­ered other plots and we started mak­ing oil for house­hold con­sump­tion,” Ferrarese said. ​“After pur­chas­ing some neigh­bor­ing land, at the end of the 1990s, he estab­lished a small mill, and in 2000, he cre­ated a com­pany.”

In 2011, the farm was cer­ti­fied organic. In 2016, Ferrarese joined his father in man­ag­ing the busi­ness, and together they founded Tèra de Prie.

The territory of Tèra de Prie is shaped by thousands year of heroic farming (Photo: Tèra de Prie)

“We have a pre­cious col­lab­o­ra­tor, Emad Balat, who began work­ing with us 25 years ago, and today he is a true expert in the con­struc­tion of dry stone walls. His skill is invalu­able. Building this type of wall with­out using bind­ing mate­r­ial not only takes effort but also calls for great exper­tise,” Ferrarese said. ​“Emad and I also take turns in man­ag­ing the com­pany mill, equipped with advanced Mori-Tem tech­nol­ogy.”

“Another great col­lab­o­ra­tor, Zeka Ilmi, works in the olive groves all year, and in the sum­mer he takes care of our veg­etable gar­den,” he added. ​“This is where we source the veg­eta­bles for our hotel’s restau­rant.”

The Ferrarese fam­ily man­ages a hotel in Diano Marina, whose cater­ing sec­tion is sup­plied with extra vir­gin olive oil and other fresh, organic agri-food prod­ucts from their farm. The hotel guests can par­tic­i­pate in olive oil tast­ings and tours of the farm and mill.

“We orga­nize events for our guests and for all those who want to visit our olive groves and the milling facil­ity, which is reg­u­larly updated with the best tech­ni­cal inno­va­tions,” Ferrarese said. ​“We make an olive oil tast­ing, and I give them some infor­ma­tion about these ter­races and the his­tory of Ligurian agri­cul­ture, try­ing to con­vey both our pas­sion and some use­ful infor­ma­tion to rec­og­nize a good extra vir­gin olive oil.”

The company’s pur­suit of qual­ity has always been closely tied to its com­mit­ment to envi­ron­men­tal sus­tain­abil­ity. Before apply­ing for organic cer­ti­fi­ca­tion, the Ferrarese fam­ily began focus­ing on organic meth­ods of pro­duc­tion.

“We min­i­mize tillage and let the spon­ta­neous herbs grow on our ter­races to improve bio­di­ver­sity and attract ben­e­fi­cial insects,” Ferrarese said.

Tèra de Prie restores between 180 and 200 square meters of dry stone walls on the property each year. (Photo: Tèra de Prie)

“We mow grass just once a year before har­vest­ing, and actu­ally, I can say that the wild boars help us prac­tice green manure, as they loosen up the soil under the trees while in search of food,” he added. ​“Indeed, our olive groves are rich in wildlife, and we aim to pre­serve this healthy envi­ron­ment.”

Most of the plots face south­west, offer­ing excel­lent expo­sure to the sun that ben­e­fits the Taggiasca olive trees. The orchards also include a few dozen trees belong­ing to yet unknown vari­eties, which ancient farm­ers used to improve pol­li­na­tion. The com­pany is cur­rently study­ing them in col­lab­o­ra­tion with a uni­ver­sity research group.

The aver­age width of a ter­race is approx­i­mately three meters, but in some cases, it can be as lit­tle as two meters. As a result, each ter­race typ­i­cally con­tains one row of olive trees, while only a hand­ful have suf­fi­cient space for two rows. For opti­mal use of space, due to logis­ti­cal and safety rea­sons, the com­pany con­ducts reg­u­lar and metic­u­lous prun­ing of its olive trees.

“The activ­i­ties on these orchards can often be stren­u­ous, and espe­cially for this, our col­lab­o­ra­tors deserve to work in a serene and pleas­ant envi­ron­ment,” Ferrarese said. ​“I believe that the respect for the land can­not be sep­a­rated from the respect for and enhance­ment of peo­ple who work and live in it.”

“Every time we hire some­one, even just for a sea­son, the first oil that comes out of the mill goes to them, because they helped us cre­ate some­thing unique like a high-qual­ity extra vir­gin olive oil,” he added. 

“True qual­ity is not an end in itself, but aims at everyone’s well-being. It seeks the com­mon good and acts in the best inter­est of the entire com­mu­nity. This is what we strive to do, and it is reflected in the care with which we pro­tect this fas­ci­nat­ing ter­ri­tory.”