Open olive-mills – even for students

“Frantoi Aperti” (open olive-mills), the annual appointment with the olive mills in Abruzzo, has the ultimate target to let students know, and consumers in general, the production tecniques of the extra-virgin olive oil. This initiative is organized by the Regional Department for Agriculture and by Arssa: fifty out of over 700 olive mills present in Italy have joined the event. During this three-day-event the citizens will have the possibility to visit the regional Oleoteca from Loreto Aprutino (Pescara) the museum of oil from Castello Amorotti and admire the rests of oil mills, dated back to XIX century. The Regional commissioner for Agriculture Mauro Febbo has presented the initiative together with Marino Giorgetti (ARSSA); Febbo underlined that oil represents an important sector of the agricultural economy from Abruzzo “as during the 50 days dedicated to the olive picking and milling, over 2500 season-workers are employed and 60000 farms are involved, almost all made up from family-members. The commissioner added: it is not by chance that Abruzzo is assigned the fifth position for production in Italy and the second as for quality”. In the meanwhile, for the whole week Arssa experts will take 1500 primary school students to guided visits in the country where they can learn picking tecniques and afterwards even to the oil mills to observe the milling phase.