by Antonino Filippo Lonobile
President Olive Tree Pruning School Giorgio Pannelli
At this moment I would like to write a few words of great praise to Barbara Nappini, who I don't know and didn't know, except for the fact that, from being an entrepreneur, she became president of Slow Food Italy. I am writing this letter only today, returning from a long business trip among the national olive groves: the director of the newspaper that publishes it can confirm this.
Dearest Nappini,
I am writing to you as president to president because I am truly happy to have read your article published in Il Fatto on 7 April 2025. I hope you will accept my "you" for at least two reasons. The first: it is not a lack of education, but a way to be closer to you. The second: for us Tuscans it is easier to address each other with the informal tu instead of the informal lei.
We talk a lot about quality, but too often we only look at the result, not the process. True quality begins long before the bottle. This truth was presented to me about thirty years ago when I attended an AIS course for sommeliers. During a visit to an organic company near Ponsacco (PI), the owner, after showing us some allelopathies between the vine and other herbaceous plants, told us in a dry tone: “You're only interested in what's inside the bottle anyway.”. I replied that it wasn't true, that I loved nature, trees, plants, etc. At the end of the day I had to agree with him, and I have continued to agree with him to this day: the consumer is only interested in what's inside the bottle.
As president of a school that teaches pruning (a term that I don't like, I prefer to say “invite to produce” for the kindness it implies), I explain that the scientific-practical method is used in the school. We study anatomy, physiology, management of grassy soil, fertility restoration, we fight against acephaly, taking into account all the scientific works that promote this approach. In short, Let's look to the past so as not to make mistakes in the future, inviting them to produce real olive trees, not forcing them to grow hedge-shaped ones.
La Slow Food's choice to exclude oils from olive groves grown in super-intensive conditions and the best decision we could have hoped for, a far-sighted choice. We live in an era that pursues everything and immediately, while the olive tree is the plant that teaches us to slow down the frenzy of modernity: can live for millennia. I wonder how anyone can fail to understand that reducing its life to a quarter of a century is against nature!
I reiterate the my support and that of the entire Olive Pruning School for what you wrote: the olive tree is a tree with a thousand functions, I would also add that it sequesters carbon, helps mitigate climate change and provides work to young and old. The important thing is to entrust them to those who know how to do this job, to those who have studied the right method.
Italy is very rich in historic olive groves. A heritage that survives over the centuries, rooted in the landscape, in the culture and in the memory of each of us and of those who work there with conscience and dedication. And yet, today, too many of these olive groves are left without custodians or entrusted to inexperienced hands. Not pruners, but “woodcutters” which act with blind and repeated cuts, transforming centuries-old trees into mutilated trunks, and productive olive groves into sterile expanses.
Faced with this lack of expertise, theand big companies – unable to find sustainable solutions – they are aimed at those who offer magic potions: scientists and consultants who promise rapid harvests, simplified management and sure profits. The price? The transformation of the landscape into a super-intensive, thirsty, fragile and eroded agricultural system. Aquifers are dried up, plants age quickly and die prematurely, and what we leave to future generations is not wealth, but a desert.
The School has created the Certified Pruner e the Certified Olive Grove, because defending an olive growing that respects the environment and the trees means choosing life, the right rhythms, knowledge.
Long Live Slow Food and extra virgin olive oils obtained from the respectful management of olive trees, the territory and the environment!
Social enterprise
ISO 9001:2015 Certified
