Olive farming alert

Olives can sustain a community - but intensive farming can be damaging

By BBC News Online's environment correspondent Alex Kirby

Two conservation groups say the European Union is ruining southern Europe by its subsidies for olive farmers.

WWF, the global environment campaign, and Birdlife International say the subsidies are making deserts of Greece, Italy, Spain and Portugal.

Intensive olive farming is a major cause of one of the biggest environmental problems facing Europe today

Richard Perkins, WWF

They want an end to payments for intensive olive production.

And they say a new system could be a model for environmentally and socially sustainable land use.

In a report, they say that almost the whole of the EU Common Agricultural Policy's budget for olives, amounting to £1.4bn ($2bn), is spent on production subsidies.

These, the report says, encourage intensified production, irrigation and the expansion of olive growing, because they pay farmers according to how much olive oil they produce.

One result, the authors say, is the impoverishment of soils across the Mediterranean region: they say the Spanish region of Andalucia alone is losing up to 80m tonnes of topsoil annually.

Thirsty trees

There, and in Puglia in Italy and on the Greek island of Crete, the report says, irrigated olive plantations are expanding in areas with serious water shortages.

In several countries natural habitats and ancient woodlands are being cleared for new intensive plantations, to the detriment of birds such as the little owl, which breeds in the trunks of old olive trees.

The report says the frequent tillage and heavy use of pesticides associated with new plantations harm quails, partridges, woodlarks and stone curlews, because they damage both habitats and food sources.

Richard Perkins, WWF's agricultural policy officer, said: ".

Over-production can damage the soil

"Olive farming could be a model for environmentally and socially sustainable land use in the Mediterranean region. Instead EU subsidies are driving the environment to ruin."

The authors of the report say traditional olive farmers are left by the subsidy system with a stark choice, either to intensify production or to abandon their land.

They say the present system has led to over-production and falling prices for olive oil, and they argue that "the CAP regime is plagued by widespread fraud".

Reform call

On 19 June EU agriculture ministers, meeting in Luxembourg, will consider a European Commission proposal to postpone the reform of the present subsidy system until 2003.

The ministers will be pressed by the four southern European olive-growing countries to postpone reform even longer, for another five years.

Giovanna Pisano of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, the UK partner of Birdlife International, said: "WWF and Birdlife International urge the ministers to reject delay and take a firm decision now to reform the olive regime.

"Payments that reward intensive production should be abolished and replaced with flat-rate payments for area of land cultivated, removing the incentive to irrigate land and intensify production."