In Western Greece, Hail Punches Olives to the Ground Just Before Harvest

The recent unset­tled weather in west­ern Greece, along with the floods it brought and the tragic toll on human lives it took in Attica, did not leave the olive crop unaf­fected. The storm called Eurydice that ham­mered many parts of the coun­try brought along strong winds, rain and hail.

And while some rain can be highly appre­ci­ated by olive grow­ers, hail is some­thing they fear most for obvi­ous rea­sons: it hits hard on the trees and causes a lot of dam­age, not only on the fruits but on the branches and the leaves as well, ren­der­ing the trees sus­cep­ti­ble to dis­ease such as pathogens that use the wounds as a gate­way to infect the plants.

In many areas, olives fell to the ground after gales and hail­storms had swept the olive groves. In the Aetolia-Acarnania region, north of Patras, approx­i­mately 12,000 olive trees were hit by hail which caused almost total destruc­tion. Extended dam­ages were reported near Messolongi, Agrinio, and the low­lands of Neochorio, where table olives of the Kalamon cul­ti­var are grown.

In the Ilia region in Peloponnesus, hail­stones the size of small nuts hit olive trees at higher lev­els and put local pro­duc­ers in despair. Half an hour of hail was enough for the olives to fall to the ground and many groves were cov­ered by a thick car­pet of olive fruit.

Even the fruit that remained on the olive trees were harmed. On top of that, the wind swept the trees of their leaves.

The cur­rent har­vest­ing sea­son was about to begin and it was eagerly antic­i­pated because the yield was expected to be more than sat­is­fac­tory, but the hail was an onslaught that pro­duc­ers had not seen com­ing.

Other areas in the coun­try were hit by the stormy weather like the island of Corfu and the regions of Argolida, Korinthia, Messinia, and Lakonia.

Many olive and cit­rus groves were dam­aged, espe­cially in west­ern Mani, part of the Messinia region, where major dam­age was inflicted on the trees at a time that most pro­duc­ers were just start­ing to har­vest.

Nothing sim­i­lar had hap­pened there for at least sev­enty years, the locals said.

Olive oil grow­ers and pro­duc­ers will be eli­gi­ble for com­pen­sa­tion, and the local author­i­ties have started to inspect the affected areas and doc­u­ment the dam­age.

The weather fore­cast for the fol­low­ing cou­ple of weeks pre­dicts a shift to colder con­di­tions with no rain in most parts of Greece, so pro­duc­ers will hope­fully be able to har­vest olives with the weather on their side.

• Patris Newspaper


• Foni Newspaper