The Long Road to Olive Ownership in Albania

Alleykat has their first go at writing and filming their first documentary on olive production and land issues in Southern Albania.. We have learnt so much from this experience, so will definitely be taking it to the next level in our next doco!

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Filmed on a compact camera and edited on an iPad!

Sorry sorry about the humble olive tree many know it as the famous plant of the Mediterranean the giver of olive oil and perhaps as the rift headdress worn by many in ancient Greek philosopher in Albania there’s a lot more to it here in lock over as in many small towns in the

South of Albania for the limited to month per year season the olive tree and its magical fruit becomes the source of income for most families getting to the olive trees is a mission itself the tracks really steep and slippery and is really hard to get up and down in the wet

This is milto milto’s family-owned 12 olive trees in this Grove as well as various fruit trees military how does one go about collecting olives it looks like a really intensive process it is it is you’re right and the main reason for that is the slope and the angle of the

Mountain slide here so the idea is we have lots of Labor and we use the black nets as you can see and we put them along the we call them here today and we go by pretty much hitting the Olli – there Elizabeth actually falls down to

The net then we call it the net and sometimes we do have to use animals to carry the eggs well you can you can pretty much see which is how much want to fill them but we go about 30 kilos no more because then it becomes and people

Collecting olives here they’re not your family are they well not not this time they came here from another city and why do they come here to collect our lives because we know there’s always in Bharat as well I don’t know about everybody but this family particularly they had

Already collected their olives I use them for anything so they pick them up green so now for them there’s nothing to do there and they are very good at picking always what is the value of a kilogram apology he’s a deal so he changed it changes

Almost daily or every two days a month ago I started with 600 lakh per kilo and today today hundred left about 25% in the past 20 days and it will continue to grow like this but as of now it is 800 per kilo sorry that supply and demand absolutely

And the thing with olives is at least with our olives here is that one year they produce fully and the next year they produce less so this here in Albania is the year that it’s big food production so the price is it’s actually much lower than it was last year same

Carrier yesterday we were guarding some olives at one of the other groves why do we do that well we actually have to do that because there’s a lot of pest is happening at least in our area here down and it’s only for two months so if we

Lose the objects now then it’s gone so we actually have to secure and protected ourselves in order for it to remain there okay thanks very much for your time yes thank you we also is just Jonas this olive whacking stick Mel so can you tell us a

Little bit about it why it’s so special we use this I guess they use this to to work with the Hitler loop so the others actually fall down now the idea is for this is supposed to be light right and flexible so it you don’t get tired very

Much with it at the same time is flexible and durable so you will go through the process and apparently they use some special wood out of it and if you can see there’s some burns to it and the reason why they burn it is because they want to straighten it and actually

The flame would harden it a little bit so that a lot of the hollow benefit of this me Paola Paola is military sister and it’s lived in the cava for a number of years Paula earlier in our trip in Albania we learnt that post communism the redistribution of land has been

Really hard what law has been brought in so that back in that code when communism came to Albania they took all the land from the people and everything was not private anymore and then the communistic system fall they had to find a way to redistribute the land it

Came the law 7501 where the land was redistributed to the people who lived in the village it was three thousand and twelve hundred ten square meters per person this law seems really simple why is it caused so many issues here I think there are two main drawbacks the first

One has to do about the fact that people didn’t inherit the land from their grandfathers like they show – but instead of that it was the law who decided who would benefit the land and who would not and the other thing is that to benefit from the law you have to

Be a registered citizen of a particular municipality even though people have allowed to work for but they don’t have the title property why does it matter here whether you have a land title or not well I think it is the same like it is if you don’t have a property title

You cannot prove that you are the owner of the land and also you cannot sell it you cannot rent it okay so you can only use your olive groves bu you can’t really do anything with that way another yes and who benefited most do you think

From how they split up the land this is a difficult question I think that it was a bit fair for the farmers let’s say the people who lived in villages because if they didn’t have this land nowadays they couldn’t manage to survive because most of the cities in here there is a

By always on the other hand it is unfair not to inherit the property from your grandparent the land property issue is so complicated in Albania so even the government cannot solve this all people want is to be able to enjoy fully their land and this cannot be if you don’t

Have a property title I hope you get the problem solved really soon thanks for talking about every olive tree that you can see was owned by one small but wealthy family prior to communism as we know the land became commonly owned during communism and post communism the land was reallocated to families under

Strict new laws this meant that the small rich family received only a fraction of their original land back there are winners and losers in this very complex situation even with laws passed and everything legalized there it door remains no foreseeable end for so many our ratings the European Union has

Indicated that if Albanians were and sold out then they may will never become a part of the EU this really hits home for a lot of Albanians because they want to keep up with the rest of the world