It didn’t matter if we were speaking with Josep Ramon, mayor of the tiny Catalonian village of Belianes, or Dr. Xavi Rius, agricultural engineer at Agromillora Iberia, the world’s largest supplier of olive and fruit trees - a spirit of innovation deeply rooted in tradition characterizes olive production in this region of Spain. Perhaps because of this entrepreneurial spirit, small growers with hundreds to thousands of trees are willing to try new cultivars and new methods of planting, pest control, ground management, and pruning. Collaboration and respect characterized their relations with each other and with the agricultural engineers focused on the production of saplings for facilities far away on the scale of millions of trees. We saw here a competence and confidence that is a product of centuries of independent self-reliance and a respect for the traditions of the past while not being root bound by them.
To read more, open the Catalonia Newsletter.
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