Towards the UNESCO Application
Our "Band Olivata Assisi-Spoleto" has recently reached an important milestone: it has officially become part of the National Register of Rural and Historic Landscapes, recognition of this that sets a solid foundation for both the inclusion of landscapes of world interest that the FAO is census, both for UNESCO's recognition of the heritage of humanity.
The Olivata Belt that goes from Assisi to Spoleto, covers about 9 thousand hectares and crosses six municipalities: Assisi, Spello, Foligno, Trevi, Campello sul Clitunno and Spoleto. It is characterized by a historical and agronomic value unique in the world: it is an ancient landscape, built and shaped by man, who with stubbornness wanted to plant, grow and raise olive trees that, with tenacity, wanted to take root, grow and produce on steep terrain, stony and not at all fertile and where no other crop could ever survive. Thanks to this union of man and culture, today we have a territory full of ancient olive trees, species with primitive genomes, rustic and resistant, unique cultivation systems made of half-moons of dry stone walls and steps of limestone stones, aggregations of people who have built countries born with the sole purpose of cultivating and harvesting the fruits of hard work, of ancient mills that preserve millennial wisdom in the extraction of the precious extra-virgin olive oil that, thanks to the peculiar characteristics of this place, incomparable organoleptic qualities.
In this area men and territory merge to such an extent that it is unthinkable for man to separate himself from the cultivation of the olive tree as well as for the olive tree it is impossible to survive without human care.
This goal is a very important goal because it allows all the small producers of extra-virgin olive oil to value the fruit of their efforts and above all to save from abandonment an ancient cultivation that is so threatened.
Threats that are of an economic and environmental nature, which grow from year to year and which make cultivation more difficult and burdensome and which, without the appropriate recognition, risks to waste away and disappear.
But the "appropriate acknowledgments" are not only those of an inscription in a Register of Rural and Historical Landscapes, but they are above all those of all the people who have always believed in the work of small producers and in the true value of this product, because, it is evident that, without anyone to appreciate it, the cultivation would have already disappeared for a while without seeing the slightest shadow neither of a national recognition nor of a global one.
People, who year after year, continue to request this oil, aware that their choice, as well as guaranteeing it an unparalleled organoleptic and health value, contributes to the maintenance of a unique landscape, to the safeguard of biodiversity with a fragile equilibrium and the livelihood of many workers that with the sweat of the forehead they participate to keep alive our green-silver patriarchs.
We hope that this National Recognition will be able to appreciate, to many other people, the whole history, the territory, the people, the work and the love that are hidden behind a simple bottle of oil, and that all this may soon become a all of humanity.
