Research-Focused Conference in Pakistan Showcases the Potential of Olive Cultivation

More than 35 sci­en­tists and PhD can­di­dates pre­sented their lat­est research find­ings at Pakistan’s third annual olive value chain con­fer­ence on June 7^th.

The con­fer­ence, which the Center of Excellence for Olive Research and Training (Cefort) hosted with PakOlive, gath­ered sci­en­tists, farm­ers and other pub­lic and pri­vate sec­tor stake­hold­ers in Chakwal, a small city sit­u­ated 100 kilo­me­ters south of Islamabad in the heart of Punjab’s olive grow­ing region.

The pre­sen­ta­tions focused on devel­op­ing olive cul­ti­va­tion as a cli­mate-resis­tant crop, bol­ster­ing coop­er­a­tion among the links of the olive oil pro­duc­tion value chain, improv­ing rural liveli­hoods through olive grow­ing and improv­ing grow­ing and milling tech­nol­ogy.

Muhammad Ramzan Anser, an agron­o­mist and the deputy project direc­tor at Cefort, told Olive Oil Times that the con­fer­ence’s goal is to improve the prof­itabil­ity of olive grow­ing in Pakistan through research and fundrais­ing.

According to Ramzan, Cefort is doing this by inte­grat­ing the knowl­edge and efforts of the pub­lic and pri­vate sec­tors. He added that the olive cen­ter also works with inter­na­tional part­ners to secure fund­ing and exper­tise for new projects.

One of the orga­ni­za­tion’s main goals is to plant olive trees on four mil­lion hectares of mar­ginal land in Pakistan, which Ramzan said helps pre­vent deser­ti­fi­ca­tion and ero­sion.

“Olives are help­ing us to com­bat the chal­lenges posed by cli­mate change and also pro­vide a good liveli­hood to those com­mu­ni­ties which have very lim­ited options out­side agri­cul­ture,” he said.

Pakistan hosts about 5 mil­lion olive trees planted on 17,000 hectares, with wide­spread olive cul­ti­vat­ing efforts begin­ning in earnest in 2016. According to Ramzan, Pakistan pro­duced 86 tons of mostly vir­gin and extra vir­gin olive oil in the 2022/23 crop year.

“If you com­pare the num­ber of trees with the fruit yield, it seems very low, but that is because of the age of our orchards,” Ramzan said. ​“Most of them are not yet fully mature.”

He added that the pro­duc­tion poten­tial of already-planted groves is expected to reach 1,400 tons annu­ally. In a 2020 inter­view with Olive Oil Times, PakOlive project direc­tor Muhammad Tariq said he expected pro­duc­tion to exceed 10,000 tons annu­ally by 2027.

Previous research from Cefort has iden­ti­fied the 12 olive vari­eties with the high­est com­mer­cial poten­tial in the coun­try, includ­ing Arbequina, Arbosana, Koroneiki, Picual, Hojiblanca and Gemlik.

Constructing the nec­es­sary milling infra­struc­ture has also been a sig­nif­i­cant part of Cefort’s pro­mo­tional efforts. Ramzan said there are now 20 mod­ern olive mills around the coun­try that trans­form olives free of charge for farm­ers.

He added that Cefort also advises farm­ers on when to begin the har­vest. Separately, a cer­ti­fi­ca­tion lab is being built in Islamabad to test the qual­ity of the oil pro­duced around the coun­try.

“We are try­ing to develop an olive cul­ture,” he said. ​“Whatever is being pro­duced must be of good qual­ity, and the farmer must receive a good return for what they pro­duce.”

Due to the immense eth­nic and lin­guis­tic diver­sity within Pakistan – more than 77 lan­guages are spo­ken across the world’s fifth most pop­u­lous coun­try – Cefort has also launched social media sup­port groups for olive farm­ers on Facebook and WhatsApp.

“Anyone in the coun­try who has any ques­tions related to pre-har­vest or post-har­vest oper­a­tions can ask in the group and receive an answer in their native lan­guage,” Ramzan said.

He added that Cefort is also devel­op­ing a mobile appli­ca­tion allow­ing farm­ers to sub­mit ques­tions and receive answers on their smart­phones.

As a result of invest­ment and devel­op­ment of the sec­tor, Ramzan said there are already 15 domes­tic brands bot­tling their olive oil.

However, he believes that the cur­rent macro­eco­nomic sit­u­a­tion in Pakistan will result in a large por­tion of locally-pro­duced oils being exported rather than remain­ing in the domes­tic mar­ket.

According to World Bank trade data, Pakistan exported slightly more than $1.9 mil­lion of vir­gin and extra vir­gin olive oil to seven coun­tries in Europe, Africa and Oceania in 2022.

The largest share of exports went to Mozambique, fol­lowed by Canada, the United Kingdom, Angola, Australia, South Africa and Tanzania.

Still, a sig­nif­i­cant trade deficit remains, with the coun­try import­ing more than $6.7 mil­lion worth of olive oil in all of its frac­tions from Spain, Italy, Turkey, Azerbaijan, Portugal, Germany, France and Brazil.

Pakistan has been actively work­ing to reduce its trade deficit to meet bud­get require­ments for a $2.5 bil­lion loan from the International Monetary Fund. The loan is needed to replen­ish the coun­try’s for­eign cur­rency reserves, which are insuf­fi­cient for a sin­gle month of imports.

Pakistan banned ​“nonessen­tial” food and cloth­ing imports last year to reduce for­eign spend­ing but carved out an exemp­tion for olive oil. The coun­try also suf­fers from record-high infla­tion, mak­ing most imported olive oils cheaper than locally pro­duced ones.

As a result, Hazan said pro­mot­ing extra vir­gin olive oil exports should be a strate­gic objec­tive to pro­vide more value to farm­ers and improve the coun­try’s trade deficit.

“The response from the mar­ket, which we are see­ing, is that in the last three years, the export of this olive oil on a pilot scale has started,” he said. ​“Within the next two or three years, this qual­ity of olive oil exports will reach high-end mar­kets.”

• Reuters
• The Express Tribune
• PakOlive