For sustainable olive oil production

OLIVE4CLIMATE – LIFE is a project co-funded by the European Commission that focuses on climate change mitigation through a sustainable supply chain for the olive oil sector.

The olive sector in Europe

The olive sector is an essential segment of the agricultural field for the European Union. It represents a significant share of the agricultural economy in the southern European countries. In terms of area, olive trees occupy 8–9% of the total cultivated land in Spain, Italy and Portugal and 20% in Greece.

Olive oil and climate change

Since the agricultural sector is responsible for 9.9% of the emissions of greenhouse gases in the EU, the relationship between agriculture and climate change is clear. The agricultural sector is also particularly vulnerable to the climate change effects and, consequently, it has to face the combined challenge of mitigation and adaptation to climate change under the new climate scenarios that are expected to arise as a result of global warming.

farms in the EU on

hectares of land produce

litres of olive oil per year.

%

of the total worldwide production of olives and olive oil comes from the EU

%

of all farms in Greece and 40% of all farms in Spain and Italy are dedicated to olives

OLIVE4CLIMATE will test and verify innovative approaches and demonstrative actions aimed at the implementation of climate change mitigation strategies linked to the olive oil supply chain.

The knowledge generated by the project will benefit various public groups:

For researchers

Researchers will have access to new findings that have been tested on site. The project results will be published in scientific journals and at relevant conferences and fairs, so they can reach other researchers working in this field worldwide. Moreover, two land-use calculators, will be applied within the project for the optimization of the agricultural solutions for climate change mitigation.

For the olive sector

The project will deliver a handbook with guidelines on sustainable olive oil production techniques for farmers and olive oil producers. Having access to this valuable knowledge will help the olive sector to improve and make their production processes more environmentally friendly. This will lead to a market advantage of their products. The project consortium will reach out to olive farmers and oil producers throughout the project duration to share the project outcomes with them.

For the public

The free source knowledge generated by OLIVE4CLIMATE and its partners will be of benefit for the general public, raising awareness about the possibilities of sustainable agricultural techniques for climate change mitigation, as well as the current developments and tests in the field.

Are you a researcher, olive farmer, olive oil producer or a journalist and you have questions or requests? Feel free to contact us:

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