Ceilidh Meo is the Leading Soil Steward at Apulia Grove Olives, a successful small-scale, mixed farming enterprise in central Victoria. When not actively engaged in farm tasks, Ceilidh designs and delivers educational and outreach programs around rural living skills development and creating successful small farms, as well as establishing local food tourism events.
Based on her experience building business relationships and community within and beyond the olive industry, her current passion is leading the formation of a democratically designed, producer co-operative for small-scale olive growers to help increase their on-farm productivity, profitability, and innovation, and to share this remembered business model with the broader small-scale agricultural sector. Having seen the amount of ownership turnover of olive groves in central Victoria in the past five years, she feels the time is ripe for collaboration over competition.