Educational Seminar on Olive Pruning for maximum yield.

Last week I was lucky enough to have been invited to an educatioal seminar organised by the local council of a nearby village to ours – Valledolmo. The seminar was organised in order to show the local olive growers some of the modern studies leading to very different ideas about olive growing and especially olive pruning and the way the trees are made to grow in order to obtain maximum yield.

It was pointed out that in recent years Italian, and especially Sicilian olive oil had suffered tremendous financial losses due to many factors including poor yield. Although acknowledged as possibly the best olive oil available, Sicily has been struggling to turn the olive oil industry into a lucrative one. A lot of the reasons for that were demonstrated during this seminar.

The seminar started with some lectures and talks and proceeded to a very interesting and illuminating demonstration in the field – photos of which are shown…
I shall be trying to adopt some of this knowledge in the coming years…