Organic Olive Groves Continue to Flourish in Spain

The land ded­i­cated to organic olive groves in Spain increased by 16 per­cent in 2021, accord­ing to the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food.

Organic olive groves now cover 256,510 hectares across 16 of Spain’s 17 autonomous com­mu­ni­ties, an area larger than Luxemburg. Cantabria, in the very north of the coun­try, is the only region with­out organic olive groves.

However, organic olive cul­ti­va­tion did not increase uni­formly across the coun­try. Between 2020 and 2021, four regions – the Basque Country, Castilla-La Mancha, the Canary Islands and Galicia – expe­ri­enced a decline in organic olive groves.

The most pro­nounced of these declines came in Castilla-La Mancha, Spain’s sec­ond largest olive oil-pro­duc­ing region, which lost 1,762 hectares of organic groves from 2020 to 2021, a 2.4 per­cent decrease.

The Basque Country had a far larger rel­a­tive decrease (15 per­cent) but only saw organic grove cov­er­age fall from 25 to 21 hectares.

Perhaps unsur­pris­ingly, the largest increase in organic olive groves by area came in Andalusia, the world’s largest olive oil-pro­duc­ing region by a wide mar­gin. Organic olive grove cov­er­age rose by nearly one-third from 88,691 hectares in 2020 to 117,380 hectares in 2021.

However, the largest per­cent increase was seen in Aragón, with organic olive cul­ti­va­tion ris­ing by 79 per­cent from 4,420 to 7,916 hectares in the same period.

Extremadura, Spain’s third-largest olive oil-pro­duc­ing region, expe­ri­enced a very slight increase in organic olive grove cul­ti­va­tion.

Catalonia, another promi­nent olive-grow­ing region, saw its share of organic olive groves increase by 9 per­cent, ris­ing from 8,870 to 9,666 hectares.

Overall, organic agri­cul­tural cul­ti­va­tions in Spain increased by 8 per­cent and now rep­re­sent nearly 11 per­cent of all agri­cul­tural land in the coun­try. The num­ber of agri­cul­tural oper­a­tions oper­at­ing under organic stan­dards rose by 16 per­cent.

The largest gains were seen in the cul­ti­va­tion of ani­mal fod­der (39 per­cent), nuts (35 per­cent), banana and sub­trop­i­cal fruits (25 per­cent) and cit­rus (21 per­cent).

• Spanish Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food