Summary

The organic farm owned by Beno Bajda has over 1 000 olive trees across a 3.7 ha area in the Municipality of Izola. The firm is helped by advisory services to protect the groves against olive fruit fly attacks. Prior to the project, it incurred significant costs for plant protection products. Entering the RDP Agri-environment-climate measure (AEC measure), allows the farmer to apply sexual confusion and disorientation methods to control the population of pest flies, using pheromones and sticky traps. The farmer also monitors the fly population on a daily basis, enabling preventive actions to be taken as needed. This approach has reduced expenditure on protection products, as well as cutting time and effort needed to control fruit flies. It has also improved product quality.

Results

The farm made a net profit of EUR 12 500 in 2016, increasing to EUR 14 000 in 2017.

The farm has won several international awards for its olive oil, including the Extragold medal Biol Novello 2017, the Extragold medal Biol 2018, and the Silver medal Olive Japan 2018 (from the Olive Oil Sommelier Association of Japan).

The innovate procedure of oil extraction with ultrasound is less time-consuming (from 45 to 30 minutes), requires less energy (-20 %) and brings better quality of olive oil that contains more antioxidants (+ 30 %) than the usual cold extraction.