What you should know about Italian Olive groves - NaijaAgroNet

NaijaAgroNet:

The hillsides between the Italian towns of Assisi and Spoleto (including Assisi, Spello, Foligno, Trevi, Campello sull Clitunno and Spoleto), where olives have been grown since the time of the Etruscans, are now one of the main olive production areas in Umbria and Italy, eports NaijaAgroNet.

The area has been recognized for the ingenuity through which natural resources and human needs have been combined to create livelihoods and mutually sustainable ecosystems. 

Even today, olive groves are cultivated with traditional knowledge and practices including the use of different types of terraces, growing technologies and genetic varieties which have been supported by local communities for many centuries. This area also demonstrates remarkable landscape of olive trees which have been formed by farmers' long term interaction with nature. 

The GIAHS register highlights unique ways that rural communities have over generations farmed in harmony with nature to create mutually sustainable livelihoods and ecosystems, and often produced remarkable landscapes in the process. 

FAO's selection criteria includes that sites be of global importance, have value as a public good in terms of supporting food and livelihood security, agro-biodiversity, knowledge systems, adapted technologies, and culture, and have outstanding landscapes. 

Evidence suggests that GIAHS designation can help conserve valuable elements of the sites while boosting demand and prices for the agricultural products, as well as encouraging tourism and jobs growth. 

The two new additions bring the total number of sites on the list to 52 in 21 countries. 

Other remarkable landscapes already recognized include Hani rice terraces in China, the Massai pastoral system in Kenya and Tanzania, the Ghout oasis system in Algeria, wasabi production in Japan, Spain's salt production in Salinas de Añana, Portugal's agro-sylvo-pastoral system in Barroso, and farmland in Mexico's Chinampas that relies on oral transmission of traditional farming techniques dating back to the Aztec civilization. 

Isaac Oyimah/GEE

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What Pope Francis told FAO

NaijaAgroNet:

The Catholic pontiff, Pope Francis, has told the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) his desire over its role in the new Mediterranean migration initiative to save 2,500 people food insecurity, reports NaijaAgroNet.

The Holy Father in a meeting with FAO Director-General José Graziano da Silva commended the agency's efforts to address migration in the Mediterranean region as well as its work to promote the strong links between peace and food security, climate change and sustainable development.

Graziano da Silva while briefing the pontiff on FAO's Blue Hope Initiative said it seeks to transform Southern Mediterranean coastal zone communities into engines of stability and growth, in particular by supporting the activities of small-scale fisheries.

"Migration is an issue which is very close to Pope Francis' heart. Much more needs to be done to tackle what is happening in the Mediterranean where more than 2,500 people are estimated to have died so far this year in attempts to reach Europe by sea," the FAO Director-General said after today's meeting.

The pontiff and Graziano da Silva also discussed the current peace efforts underway in Colombia and in the Central African Republic and the hope that lasting solutions will be found for the conflict in the two countries.

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