The day I adopted an olive tree

This article is also available in Spanish here// Este artículo está disponible en castellano aquí.

Carmen, the olive tree I have adopted. (Photo: Apadrina un olivo)
Carmen, the olive tree I have adopted. (Photo: Apadrina un olivo)

A year ago this week, I adopted an olive tree. I called it Carmen, after my grandmother. Whenever I want to know about my tree I just need to open an app that I have installed on my mobile phone. I can see pictures of it and whether it has been pruned, or what the local weather’s like, etc.… Once a year I receive two bottles of delicious olive oil. But what I love most, is that for only 50€ per year I am helping to employ people at risk of exclusion, I am helping young people to have a future in their village so they don’t have to migrate to the city, and I am preventing the closure of a local school in a village that, like so many others in inner Spain, have had to face the monsters of depopulation, ageing and loneliness. All at the same time as I am helping to recover hundred-year old olive trees and local traditions and conserve landscapes, care for the land, and support environmental, social and economic sustainability.

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When preserving the wool means preserving the territory

This article is available in Spanish here.// Este artículo está disponible en español aquí.

Extensive livestock farming is the most important population-fixing activity in Iberian rural areas. This is so because, unlike other activities, it requires people to take care of the animals every day. Furthermore, in many marginal rural areas, extensive livestock farming is often the only possibility that the territory has to offer.

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