The Greek terrain is 80% mountainous, this means that cultivating olives is much harder than other countries that produce olives, this is great for our consumers as in Greece we still hand pick our olives, however it is difficult on an industrial level, it is therefore important to support small farmers in order to keep this tradition alive
There are numerous benefits to hand picking olives, the main one that is in honour of Greece and small Greek farmers is that the method used by hand picking does not harm the birds and other animals that use the trees as well, a very well known method in many other countries is the olive suction from the trees, this method basically lines up with the trees and goes down the field sucking anything it can off the trees. Unfortunately in many cases this also means birds, squirrels and any other animal that can be in the tree at the time of suction, as this usually takes place at night it is the "resting species" that are affected most!
Read more on this by Daniel Dawson here
This makes it even more important for us to support smaller scale farmers in Greece as they struggle to keep up with this unethical industrial cultivation of olives.
So Pick Greek olives as they are all guaranteed to be hand picked under the sun!
