CIHEAM Press Review

A lack of cooperation throughout the sector is hurting producers’ bottom lines, according to an agricultural institute study.

The Italian olive sector lags largely below its potential because of the lack of a shared vision and solid data upon which the future of the industry should be developed, according to the latest report from the Institute for Services to the Agricultural Market (Ismea).

Blanca Torrent, the exec­u­tive direc­tor of Andalusia-based Torrent Olives, was among the win­ners of the 2020 Mujer Agro awards in Madrid.
Presented by Spain’s National Association of Agronomic Engineers (INIA), the dig­i­tal news­pa­per eComercioAgrario and the Siete Agromarketing agency, the award rec­og­nizes the work of women in the agri­cul­tural sec­tor to pro­mote gen­der equal­ity and empower other women work­ing in the sec­tor.

Olive oil pro­duc­tion in Puglia has grown by 21 per­cent over the past decade despite a seem­ingly end­less bar­rage of chal­lenges.
Still, farm­ers in the south­west­ern Italian region, which accounts for more than half of Italy’s over­all pro­duc­tion, believe they would have fared much bet­ter if local and national author­i­ties had imple­mented a wide and thought­ful strate­gic vision for the devel­op­ment of the sec­tor.