I'm Elisabeth Gallardo and I am passionate about the olive oil world. We seek the highest quality in our products and we deliver them to your home. There isn’t a better reward for our work than being phoned to repeat an order or being congratulated for our olive oil quality. My family has always been connected with the olive grove; UnOlivo began its journey in the early 20th century. In 1900 my great-grandfather Julio was a noted oil broker of Castillo de Locubín (in the Southern highlands of Jaén). He bought oil from the local producers and sold it in Motril’s port (Granada). He was known for his entrepreneurship, and he prospered thanks to his tenacity. With the Spanish civil war’s outbreak, this visionary had to leave his trade. His fighter soul, his passion for olive oil and the respect for the earth’s products did not disappear. They arose again over 20 years ago through his grandson Julio Gallardo, my father. He followed his ancestors’ steps, taking it further and starting his own oil production. The effort finally paid and drove a new challenge, building and owning an olive mill, giving way to UnOlivo. I remember harvesting with my family from a very young age on vacations and weekends, we had to go to the land! These were great days when rather than working we enjoyed eating from a “perol” (a large typical skillet where food was prepared for everyone), and had a great family day together. Before UnOlivo, we already had an olive oil mill, but it was my initiative to create a brand, to sell our EVOO bottled instead of in bulk. I’ve been in charge of coordinating the entire process personally: building up the brand, creating the website, designing labels, catalogs… the entire UnOlivo project was born under my direction. It's like having a baby and watching its growth and maturity. This project evokes in me the same feelings, making us prouder every day of what we do and how we do it. We take care of the olive grove throughout the whole year, collecting the olives for about two months in winter and sending bottled olive oil on any date. Thanks to that, my brother and I can employ several people from the town throughout the year, plus keeping our positions. The legacy continues, and we will always make it progress! Apart from supporting my father in the original project, my brother and I aim for high quality organic olive oil: early harvest and premium. We commercialize our bottled olive oil both in the national and international markets. The olive oil future for small producers like us is quite uncertain, with low prices as the main problem. The olive oil is under the farmer’s profitability threshold, and it is not profitable to take care of the olive grove and collect the olives. If prices remain the same, many farmers will have to give up. Also, the competition is strong since super-intensive plantations are proliferating, where the quality of the product is lower. They end up depleting the land, employ less people and need a lot of water and other products. Traditional olive grove farmers can’t compete against that. Options like CrowdFarming are vital for small farmers, giving us visibility. Also for consumers it is interesting - you won't find anyone who cares and looks after the product so much as small and family-run businesses.

The plantation is located in the municipal area of Larva, the smallest municipality in Jaén. It is the last town that belongs to Sierra Mágina range, a beautiful natural spot with many sunshine hours. We carry out a controlled irrigation that makes our picual olive oil equilibrated and smooth. This area was known as “the desert of Jaén”, since it barely rains and it was a land destined to the cultivation of cereals. As the rains weren’t plentiful, cereals dried up and the land became barren. When my father bought the land in Larva, it was fallow, we planted it with olive trees and an irrigation community was created among the residents of the area. Now those lands have nothing to do with a desert, to the contrary, now it is an orchard! There are young olive groves wherever you look at and it is a rich and productive land. The area has transformed from an aging municipality that young people fled in order to work and have a future, to being an area where many young locals ”Larveños” settle to take care of their family’s lands. The country estate has 53 hectares (579,613.3000 yards) and has belonged to my family for 25 years. In the estate there were 6 hectares of traditional centenary olive groves and 47 hectares of fallow land, which were planted with the picual variety olive trees when it was purchased. Larva is a mountain region, where there weren’t olive mills to process the olives. We had to transport it to other larger towns, which was time consuming. Due to this, we decided to invest in building an olive oil mill to ground our olives and offer a service to other farmers in the area. Today, our olive oil mill is the only industry in the town. During the harvest season we employ about 11-14 people, and the rest of the year we have a 4 people team. Three out of those four are freelancers: my father Julio, who is the company’s manager and in charge of dealing with the farmers who provide us the olives and managing the olive grove day-to-day; my brother Alberto, devoted to production, is the olive mill master and is in charge of bottling and preparing the orders; and myself in charge of the administration and sales. For us, water is a key factor. The water for our olive grove comes from the irrigation community “Llanos de Larva”. We count with accumulation ponds which we fill during the winter to be able to water the plants during the spring and the summer, and we use drippers to water the olive trees. Ten years ago we certified our country estate as organic, since then using only organic products to fertilize and take care of our olive trees. Additionally, we use by-products from the oil mill and the olive grove to fertilize the land. We compost the leaves that we collect in the factory, and the pruning waste is grinded and added to the olive grove soil, turning into organic matter assimilable for the plant. We have a little wormery, where we produce humus that we use as compost. In the factory we separate the pit and the olive flesh from the olive and we use it in the boiler as biomass.