From a technical point of view, integrated production is a way to produce high quality organoleptic food, similar to those with certified guarantee. It is achieved by using farming techniques that respect the environment, ensuring a long-term environmentally sustainable farming.
Integrated Production can be understood as a production model between Conventional farming and Organic farming; it contributes more respect for the environment than Conventional farming while at the same time bigger production than Organic farming.
It combines biological organic aspects of the crop in those aspects which refer to machinery, manipulation of the land, irrigation, fertilizers or other products that control plagues, diseases and weeds. The goals of integrated production can be grouped in 3 components: Quality, Environment and Economic.
Quality component: there is a strict control of all interventions in the production of the product until its commercial release. This way all treats and products used for the crop are registered during all phases of production, elaboration, conservation, and packaging.
Environmental component: Integrated production assures a production of food using mechanisms which are respectful with the environment, guarding the biological balance. These way natural resources are optimized to improve the fertility of the land, keeping superficial and subterranean water salubrious, protect biodiversity and strengthen the conserving activity of rural environment and landscape.
Economic component: Integrated production is a system that assures and guarantees a sustainable, viable and profitable farming. This way, productivity of activity in economic terms, with the application of the right technology and reducing agricultural consumables such as seeds and fertilizers, are maintained. On the other hand it increases the product's value yet that the product has a logo or other identification of certified guarantee, given by the government, which means an increase of unique features of the product.
2. INTEGRARED PRODUCTION ASSOCIATIONS.
Integrated production is always carried out below the direction of an agricultural technician. This Technician directs one or various cultivations which constitute an association, known as API in Andalusia or APRIA in Extremadura.
3. TRACEABILITY OF THE PRODUCT AND ITS QUALITY CONTROL.
All associations of Integrated Production and its commercial operators have an implanted and obligatory system of traceability.
The traceability of a product means controlling the entire process of production and assures the identification in each moment of the batches of olives. From its harvest on the land, its processing, storage and packaging as olive oil, tapenade or table olive, until its release to the final consumer.
This traceability is a guarantee for the consumer, so that he/she can get to know the origin of the product which he/she consumes, how the crop has been treated and how the product was elaborated. This system ensures that the olive oil made below the guarantee of Integrated Production is indeed produced with olives cultivated under Integrated Production's practices, free of plagues and diseases and harvest in the very best moment and directly from the tree. Obtaining in this way an olive oil, olive or tapenade of unbeatable organoleptic characteristics.
All practices that have been carried out on an estate are annotated in a notebook of exploitation. This notebook is available for the government, external auditors and clients, who can get to know all details of the practices followed during the acquisition of the olives and the oil.
As well as these exhaustive intern controls of the Associations, all of them are regularly inspected by independent companies which verify that all the annotations in the notebook have really been carried out and whether the Regulation of Integrated Production has really been fulfilled, especially those concerning waste control.
