The landscape of the olive tree: old and new visions
Author(s)
Barbera Giuseppe
Date Issued
2023
Type
bookPart
Start Page
658
End Page
672
Abstract
Landscape is one ecosystem services to whose maintenance agriculture is called. In a context of accelerating environmental changes, as well as profound social and cultural transformations, agriculture must face new challenges, as well defined by the UN goals for the sustainable development (SDGs, Agenda 2030). In particular, the challenge of meeting the food needs of the population, the need to combat and adapt to climate change, the necessity of preserving terrestrial ecosystems, invest agriculture with a primary role and farmers with a great public responsibility. The sustainability of production chains must be based on new knowledge, skills and awareness of the common benefits that can be derived from primary production.
Today, landscape represents an essential aspect of the agricultural production. It can be a factor of recognition of farms and agri-food products, counteracting the degradation of terrestrial ecosystems and the globalization of agri-food production (Biasi 2021; Russo et al
., 2020). In the agronomic disciplines, the approach of evaluating the sustainability of production chains on the basis of the effects on biodiversity and landscape, as well as on the physical environment in which they occur and on the environmental resources, is now well established. Biodiversity should be considered as the set of plant and animal biological diversity associated with the production process, i.e. as agro-biodiversity, that is the set of species and their ecosystems that characterize the agro-ecosystem and that coexist with it allowing the productive result. Similarly, the diversity of the ecosystems, land use and covers of an area of cultivation (at large scale), determine the quality of the agricultural landscape, which is the result of the modification of the environment by man for the purpose of its production activities. Today the landscape is to all intents and purposes a dimension of agricultural production, being the expression of the multifunctionality of agriculture, which, in addition to being an activity in the interest of the individual, is an essential activity for the benefits of the community. There is a close relationship between "ecology", defined above all by the level of biodiversity and the balance between biological systems, and "aesthetics" of the resulting landscape. What is perceived as a landscape of quality and beauty is objectively of high value, because of the complexity of forms and ecosystems that are expression of ecological and environmental value.
Owing to the biological characteristics of the species Olea europaea and because of the history of the evolution of cultivation techniques for this crop, which has made more problematic than for other tree systems the intensification process and the mechanization of production phases, the landscape of the olive tree in most contexts in which it is wide spayed is emblematic of the traditional multifunctionality of the tree crop systems. This chapter highlights the reasons.