This news article was originally written in Spanish. It has been automatically translated for your convenience. Reasonable efforts have been made to provide an accurate translation, however, no automated translation is perfect nor is it intended to replace a human translator. The original article in Spanish can be viewed at Olivar adehesado: integración del pastoreo con ganado ovino como herramienta de gestión en los olivares ecológicos

The work was awarded with the Prize Andrés Núñez of Meadow in Investigation in Ecological Production

Olivar adehesado: Integration of the pastoreo with livestock ovino like tool of gestión in the olivares ecological

María Dolores Carbonero; Ernesto Fajardo; Pilar Fernández; and José Emilio Guerrero

(Departments of Forestry Engineering and Animal Production of the University of Córdoba)

18/12/2012

The olivar constitutes the activity agronómica with greater historical importance in Andalucia, modelando from Phoenician period so much the zones of campiñas like the ones of saw in our autonomous community. In the actuality, the expansion of the sector and the intensification of the production and of the practices of handle after a greater economic profitability has generated a situation of high risk regarding the erosion and the loss of the floors and biodiversidad, especially in those situated in slopes with moderate or strong slopes. They are precisely these terrains those that in a lot of occasions have been cultivated with olivos, because of his good capacity to grow in climatic conditions and edafológicas limited.

At present the frame of reference in which it had come developing the activity agropecuaria during the last decades is substituting the paradigm of the intensification and productive specialisation by the one of the agriculture multifuncional, where the productive efficiency, the quality and hygiene of the foods, the respect by the environingingment, the diversification of activities in the exploitations, etc., contribute to the social welfare and to the maintenance and development of our villages and rural communities.

The gestión of the olivar like a system agrosilvopastoral where convive the arboreal stratum with a stable vegetal cover and an aprovechamiento grazier, could be an alternative for some olivares, since both productions could see benefited so much from an economic punto, as social and environingingmental, because of the greater stability and profitability of the binomial agriculture-livestock. However, they exist other interactions, that can produce effects no wished if it does not manage of form adapted the pastoreo. It is thus that the utilisation successfully of the livestock like tool of control of the vegetation in the olivares precise of a cuidar programming of the pastoreo that favour the consumption by part of the livestock of the vegetation herbácea of spontaneous character, avoiding the ramoneo of the olivo. This task requires to understand and know, among others appearances, what eats the livestock, how much can eat and how comports in conditions of pastoreo.

The present work has pretended to identify and characterise key ‘exploitations' of olivar in which it avenges realising the control of the vegetation herbácea by means of pastoreo with livestock ovino to end to know the possibilities that would have drive the pastoreo in the olivares and warn his possible negative effects. Besides it has treated to evaluate, from the perspectives of all the actors involved, the inconvenient/profits that produces the incorporation of the pastoreo with livestock ovino in the olivar and identify and analyse the critical points for his adoption.

The results indicate that it exists a wide variability in the handle of the pastoreo in the olivares adehesados, finding important differences in function of the surface of olivar, the orography and the productivity of the half, as well as in function of the characteristics of the herd, that can be suitable or extraneous and the available infrastructure for his gestión. The exploitations that take advantage of all the potentialities of the binomial olivar-livestock achieve some better results in the appearance of the productivity although varying the strategies employed.

In the olivares adehesados the degree of integration between the tasks of the olivar and the corresponding to the livestock ovino is very high, producing at all times relations of induction between some works and others and squaring of a comfortable and applicable form the calendar of works along the year. The economic feasibility of the olivares adehesados studied depends to a large extent of the available infrastructures for the gestión of the livestock, being very favourable the fence and parcelado of the olivar to realise a more efficient control of the pastoreo of the herd like tool of gestión. They are this type of olivares adehesados those that obtain finally a greater sustainability to economic level.

Have detected a good number of fortresses that endorse this type of use of the half so much in environingingmental terms (conservation of resources) as economic when taking advantage of of a more efficient way a lot of endogenous resources presents in Andalusian regions. In this sense pose many of the opportunities that has the olivar adehesado between which stand out the peak of the ecological agriculture and the progressive approach of the consumer to the producer. Between the weaknesses and threats that would hamper a consolidation of this type of aprovechamiento it would be necessary to quote the desconocimiento on how handle of an optimum way the olivar and the livestock, the desprofesionalización and aging of the agricultural sector and grazier and the desvinculación in a lot of regions of the agricultural sector with regard to the sector grazier until the extreme of the almost disappearance of this last (areas with empty graziers).

Finally it could conclude that the model of olivar adehesado can constitute a real alternative for the olivar Andalusian, so much for that considered like marginal for the agricultural production, as for the olivar productive of intensive character, since although the first needs of an urgent change to reach the economic profitability and avoid his abandonment, the second requires of alternatives of gestión after achieving a more sustainable production from the social and environingingmental punto. The adoption of this system by more agriculturalists and Andalusian graziers goes through the study, diffusion and general knowledge of the critical appearances found in the gestión of the pastoreo in the olivares adehesados, that in case of not to realise of accurate form and in accordance with the here exposed can involve damages to the olivar and also to the livestock translated in economic losses for the exploitations.

A prize to a work in team

The Prize Andrés Núñez of Meadow in Investigation in Ecological Production in his announcement 2012 has been conceded to the work ‘Olivar Adehesado: Integration of the Pastoreo with Livestock Ovino like Tool of Gestión in the Olivares Ecological'. His authors are María Dolores Carbonero Muñoz, Ernesto Fajardo Nolla, Pilar Fernández Rebollo and José Emilio Guerrero Ginel of the Departments of Forestry Engineering and animal Production of the University of Córdoba. Said work freamers inside the project ‘experimental Models of olivar adehesado', innovative project associated to the National Rural Network of the announcement of the year 2010 and cofinanciado by the FEADER and the Ministry of Environingingment, Rural and Marino. In him they have participated the following institutions: the General Steering of Territorial Development of the Council of Agriculture Fishes and Environingingment of the Board of Andalucia, responsible of the execution of the project; the association Group for the Rural Development Subbética Cordobesa, attendant to promote and coordinate the distinct performances; the Institute of Investigation and Agricultural Learning and Pesquera, IFAPA, commissioned of the activities of learning and divulging; and the Universities of Jaén and Córdoba, that have llevar the experimental activities and of investigation.