Portuguese Group Expands Sustainability Program After Alentejo Success

Summary

Olivum, a lead­ing indus­try group in Portuguese olive oil pro­duc­tion, is expand­ing its sus­tain­abil­ity cer­ti­fi­ca­tion pro­gram after a suc­cess­ful trial in Alentejo, with the first cer­ti­fied bot­tles expected by the 2025/26 har­vest. The cer­ti­fi­ca­tion pro­gram aims to rec­og­nize and encour­age sus­tain­able prac­tices in olive oil pro­duc­tion, cov­er­ing cri­te­ria such as soil bio­di­ver­sity, water use, and pack­ag­ing, while also address­ing con­cerns about the envi­ron­men­tal impact of super-high-den­sity olive groves in Alentejo. Moreira, the coor­di­na­tor of the pro­gram, empha­sizes the impor­tance of improv­ing sus­tain­abil­ity prac­tices to enhance bio­di­ver­sity, soil health, and water man­age­ment in the olive sec­tor, ulti­mately ben­e­fit­ing the envi­ron­ment and local com­mu­ni­ties.

An indus­try group respon­si­ble for 70 per­cent of Portuguese olive oil pro­duc­tion is expand­ing its sus­tain­abil­ity cer­ti­fi­ca­tion pro­gram after a suc­cess­ful trial in Alentejo.

“We spent two years devel­op­ing it with a pilot group of pro­duc­ers and mills who helped us build this bench­mark,” said Gonçalo Moreira, the coor­di­na­tor of Olivum’s olive oil sus­tain­abil­ity pro­gram. ​“What we saw was a suc­cess.” 

“In the last year, we worked to turn it into a cer­ti­fi­ca­tion,” he added. ​“Now that we have fin­ished and trained all the cer­ti­fy­ing bod­ies, they are in the field car­ry­ing out the first audits.” 

When we talk about sus­tain­abil­ity, there are three areas. We have to think about the envi­ron­ment. We have to think about the social aspect. And then the eco­nomic aspect.- Gonçalo Moreira, sus­tain­abil­ity coor­di­na­tor, Olivum

Moreira expects the first bot­tles of Portuguese extra vir­gin olive oil to receive the sus­tain­able cer­ti­fi­ca­tion seals as the 2025/26 har­vest gets under­way. 

The idea for the sus­tain­abil­ity cer­ti­fi­ca­tion emerged after Olivum explored the food indus­try for sim­i­lar pro­grams, draw­ing inspi­ra­tion from sus­tain­able wine­mak­ing ini­tia­tives in Australia, New Zealand, and California.

“But in olive oil, there was no bench­mark for sus­tain­able pro­duc­tion,” Moreira said. ​“So Olivum took on the respon­si­bil­ity of try­ing to respond to mar­ket demands… and with this, to add value to the olive oil we pro­duce here in Portugal.”

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The association’s sus­tain­abil­ity team col­lab­o­rated with local uni­ver­si­ties to iden­tify 138 cri­te­ria, encom­pass­ing every aspect of pro­duc­tion, from soil bio­di­ver­sity and water use to pack­ag­ing and trans­porta­tion.

Moreira said these cri­te­ria are divided into four dif­fer­ent lev­els, with the idea being that farm­ers and millers should take a method­i­cal approach to imple­ment­ing sus­tain­able prac­tices and build­ing on them over time.

“We already have many good sus­tain­abil­ity prac­tices hap­pen­ing in the field,” he said. ​“We want to rec­og­nize these prac­tices and com­mu­ni­cate them — that is also what cer­ti­fi­ca­tion is for.”

“But we can­not stop there,” Moreira added. ​“That is why our bench­mark has four lev­els. When a pro­ducer already has sus­tain­able prac­tices, we encour­age them every year to do more until they reach the best prac­tices.”

Certification audits are car­ried out annu­ally by inde­pen­dent, gov­ern­ment-rec­og­nized enti­ties. The results of the sur­veys are pub­lished on a dig­i­tal plat­form.

“We col­lect infor­ma­tion about what is being done in the field and in each com­pany,” Moreira said. ​“This gives us met­rics and num­bers. We can­not improve what we can­not mea­sure.” 

“With these mea­sure­ments, we can see what is being done well and what is not evolv­ing as we intended,” he added. ​“We need to work with pro­duc­ers, show new prac­tices, and most impor­tantly, com­mu­ni­cate to con­sumers what is hap­pen­ing in the field.”

Producers cover the costs, but Moreira believes they will not be pro­hib­i­tive.

Indeed, he stated that con­sumers have demon­strated a will­ing­ness to pay more for cer­ti­fied sus­tain­able olive oil, with one study show­ing that they would pay €0.80 more per kilo­gram com­pared to olive oil with­out the seal.

“When we talk about sus­tain­abil­ity, there are three areas. We have to think about the envi­ron­ment,” Moreira said. ​“We have to think about the social aspect. And then the eco­nomic aspect — if we do not have the eco­nomic side, the olive grove can­not func­tion.”

“This is very impor­tant so that there can be social sta­bil­ity, so that grow­ers and their work­ers are pro­tected and moti­vated,” he added.

The launch of the cer­ti­fi­ca­tion comes six months after a report from Euronews, which described the rapid rise of super-high-den­sity olive groves around the Alqueva dam in Alentejo as an ​“eco­cide.”

Euro News reported that the dam has mainly ben­e­fited large investor-owned olive oil pro­duc­ers, includ­ing Elaia, De Prado and Aggraria, while fail­ing to cre­ate enough well-paid jobs to reverse the rural exo­dus and dam­ag­ing the envi­ron­ment.

“Scientists and envi­ron­men­tal­ists have warned that inten­sive olive farm­ing in south­ern Portugal is trans­form­ing a once diverse land­scape into monot­o­nous rows of inten­sive plan­ta­tions, dam­ag­ing ecosys­tems and con­t­a­m­i­nat­ing water and soil with agro­chem­i­cals,” Euronews wrote.

Pedro Horta, a pol­icy offi­cer at the Portuguese envi­ron­men­tal orga­ni­za­tion Zero, told the pan-European broad­caster that the orga­ni­za­tion has doc­u­mented the destruc­tion of water net­works, dam­age to pro­tected areas, and agri­cul­tural prac­tices that have resulted in soil ero­sion and degra­da­tion.

“Given the scale of the trans­for­ma­tion of the land­scape, we can call this an eco­cide,” said Horta, fur­ther con­tend­ing that super-high-den­sity groves have also led to sig­nif­i­cant bio­di­ver­sity loss.

Moreira dis­puted some of the report­ing as mis­in­for­ma­tion and believes that inde­pen­dent audits of tra­di­tional, medium-den­sity, high-den­sity and super-high-den­sity olive groves across the coun­try will demon­strate the efforts made to improve sus­tain­abil­ity.

The rapid transformation of Alentejo’s landscape over the past two decades has led to skepticism about the benefit of the high concentration of olive groves. (Photo: Olivum)

“What we want is for the olive grove to con­tribute to leav­ing the envi­ron­ment and the areas where it is located bet­ter than before, to increase bio­di­ver­sity, improve the soil and man­age water prop­erly,” he said.

Moreira said that pro­duc­ers par­tic­i­pat­ing in the pro­gram, from all kinds of olive groves, were plant­ing veg­e­ta­tive cover to help cap­ture nat­ural rain­wa­ter, pre­vent ero­sion, sequester more car­bon diox­ide, and cre­ate habi­tats for native insect and bird species.

“This veg­e­ta­tive cover pro­tects the soil, keeps more mois­ture, allows more car­bon in the soil, and brings more bio­di­ver­sity,” he said. ​“With this, for exam­ple, we have more ben­e­fi­cial insects, which means fewer treat­ments and less use of pes­ti­cides.”

According to Moreira, Portugal’s olive sec­tor once accounted for 15 per­cent of the coun­try’s total phy­tosan­i­tary prod­uct use. That fig­ure has now dropped to seven per­cent.

Other prac­tices include adopt­ing pre­ci­sion and drip irri­ga­tion sys­tems pow­ered by renew­able energy, which enable farm­ers to auto­mate irri­ga­tion when the plants need water the most, and leav­ing veg­e­ta­tion along irri­ga­tion lines to serve as bio­di­ver­sity cor­ri­dors.

Moreira stated that stud­ies com­mis­sioned by Olivum have revealed a sig­nif­i­cant increase in bio­di­ver­sity in mod­ern olive groves, fol­low­ing the adop­tion of sus­tain­able prac­tices, includ­ing the pres­ence of wild boar, tor­toises, rab­bits, and the Iberian lynx.

Moreira under­stands that there may be skep­ti­cism toward the plant­ing of super-high-den­sity groves around the Alqueva dam, which has trans­formed the land­scape over the past two decades.

However, he expects that pro­duc­ers with the new sus­tain­able cer­ti­fi­ca­tion can help com­mu­ni­cate to con­sumers and the gen­eral pub­lic the ben­e­fits that can come with these groves. 

“These groves did not exist 20 years ago,” he con­cluded. ​“What we are cre­at­ing has changed the land­scape, and peo­ple did not under­stand because it hap­pened so quickly. But now there is less neg­a­tive com­mu­ni­ca­tion.”