Regarding the climate, with the exception of the great irregularity seen in recent years, the Alentejo (and also the Algarve) is characterised by a climate with markedly Mediterranean characteristics, where the wheat fields, olive groves, vineyards and Alentejo pigs, the “Mediterranean tetralogy”, in the words of Alfredo Saramago, were the basis of a rudimentary economy, limited to the national whole.
In recent decades, of this tetralogy, only olive oil and wine have achieved significant developments, with considerable importance in the national economy and expression in the foreign market. The Alentejo pig, which we will discuss later, has a much more modest importance and the wheat crop is on the verge of extinction.
It is common knowledge that cereal production in Alentejo has been decreasing substantially. Today we live off imported wheat, to the tune of more than one million tons/year.
In contrast, olive groves, vineyards and also almond groves (an innovation in the local agricultural landscape) have gained leading positions in the economy of this vast region of the country.
“A açorda eaten these days is unlikely to be made with Alentejo wheat bread. On the other hand, the possibility of it being seasoned with olive oil from the region has increased a lot in recent years.”
This expressive and happy phrase by journalist Aníbal Fernandes, from Diário do Alentejo, has the aroma of pennyroyal and says, with words to match, a reality that we are living.
By making use of the water from the Alqueva dam, the largest artificial lake in Western Europe, ensuring, in 2022, around 120 thousand hectares of irrigated land, and growing, we have seen, in recent years, the replacement of the “bread crop”, not only by olive groves (occupying more than 70 thousand hectares and growing), but also by other irrigated crops, such as almonds (with around 20 thousand hectares), sunflowers, corn, pastures and forage (ryegrass, lucerne and sorghum).
Let's now talk about the olive grove.
The olive grove that Orlando Ribeiro and Alfredo Saramago talk about is what we now call an old olive grove. Old, because there is a new one, called modern.
In thirty years, we have gone from the traditional, hard work of manual harvesting on the ground, done in winter, to a mechanized harvest, where the olives are picked green, without being beaten or falling to the ground, allowing the production of high-quality olive oils.
Introduced to the Peninsula by the Greeks and Phoenicians and expanded by the Roman and Arab invaders, the olive grove referred to by the aforementioned authors still stands, somewhat dispersed across the landscape, with olive trees that are often centuries old and some are thousands of years old.
For centuries it was the basis of traditional dry farming and a semi-artisanal industry, incapable of meeting the needs of national consumption.
Over the last three decades, Portuguese olive groves have been transformed into intensively farmed irrigated olive groves, making Alentejo the region with the highest olive production in the country, with an average of 10 to 12 tonnes per hectare. Portugal has gone from being an importer to an exporter of top-quality olive oil that wins awards abroad.
Today, this modern olive grove is spoken of as a true revolution in the national agricultural landscape, thanks to the “miracle” of the water from the Alqueva Dam.
Vast areas of the Alentejo are now a green carpet, due to the super-intensive planting (according to environmentalists) of irrigated olive groves. Opponents of this “revolution” speak of the destruction of biodiversity, the depletion of water resources and atmospheric pollution.
On the other side of interests, farmers counter that modern olive groves are responsible for more than 85% of the total national olive oil production, a figure that is growing, since the planting area has been increasing.
They also argue that it is a crop with low water requirements, that degrades the soil less and that, on the contrary, increases the amount of organic matter, that sequesters more CO2 from the atmosphere (currently estimated at around 540 thousand tons/year), and is therefore more sustainable, with some defending it as the maximum exponent of technology at the service of olive oil quality and environmental sustainability.
I lean towards the environmentalists and always doubt the good intentions of these super-enterprises.
Author António Galopim de Carvalho is a geologist
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