How to deal with competing types of nature and agriculture in the same area: A case study on Spanish olive groves

In this paper the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) multicreteria evaluation method has been used to evaluate 4 different competing management options at olive plantations (Olea europaea L.) in mountain areas. All the evaluation process is integrated into a Geographical Information System (GIS) that gave possibility to allocate each of the options geographically. The results suggested that area currently occupied by conventional olive farming should be restructured as (% of area occupation): 35.8% to conventional olive farming, 23.3% to integrated olive farming, 19.1% to organic olive farming and 22.8% transformed to natural use as a Mediterranean forest in order to increase the social welfare of the society.