Olive oil, biological production to be improved

The biological olive farming covers in Italy about 107.000 hectares, that is to say about 10% of the whole biological surface and 9.6% of the whole Italian olive production. On the whole about 30% of biological olive land of the Mediterranean area is in Italy, followed by Spain (200.000 acres, 25%), then Tunisia (197.723,84 acres, 22%) and Greece (97.942,69 acres, 11%). The four countries have 88% of the whole production; thus showing an extreme concentration of the possible offer, that is very far from the real one. In fact a lot of European producers certificate the so-called agricultural phase, getting the single shared fund regarding the soil cultivated by organic method. To achieve the premium prize (a further European fund) the certification of the mill-phase and the following packaging phase are also needed; besides a suitable marketing system (distribution and promotion) is requested; this provides a packaging given by one of the certification corporations, with the simultaneous printing of labels, endowed with an alpha-numbered code; the labels are the same number as the bottles and the milk the responsible wants to fill in. In jargon , these farms (farmers, oil mills or blenders) are the so-called license-holders. In economical studies led inside Olibio project, the behaviour, the problems and the perspectives of the license holders have been detected; the last survey about this item dated back to 1996 (Santucci 1997).