South African Olive Farmers Feel the Heat as Wildfires Take Their Toll

For a long time, South Africa has been a small but ener­getic player in the inter­na­tional olive oil mar­ket. Recent con­di­tions might soon seri­ously impact the indus­try, as olive pro­duc­tion in the country’s olive oil-mak­ing cap­i­tal (the Western Cape) begins to suf­fer from the worst drought in over three decades bring­ing with it severe water short­ages and deadly wild­fires.

The Western Cape is home to over more than 90 per­cent of the esti­mated 1.6 mil­lion olive trees in South Africa, with many of the country’s 140 pro­duc­ers set­ting up shop in the region to tak­ing advan­tage of the area’s Mediterranean cli­mate of cold and wet win­ters and hot, dry sum­mers.

Recent months have seen sum­mer tem­per­a­tures soar in the area, and with lit­tle respite from rain to be expected, many dams in the area have dropped to less than half full and are still drop­ping. It is esti­mated that res­i­dents of the City of Cape Town could run out of water in a mat­ter of months, and strict water restric­tions have been put in place by the gov­ern­ment.

According to non-profit orga­ni­za­tion GreenCape’s 2016 Water Market Intelligence Report, most of South Africa’s water is used to irri­gate the country’s agri­cul­tural land. While the Western Cape region’s 11.5 mil­lion agri­cul­tural hectares only account for about 12 per­cent of the avail­able farm­land in South Africa, it is respon­si­ble for pro­duc­ing up to 60 per­cent of the country’s agri­cul­tural exports, which means that for­eign trade will be most affected by the drought.

Not only do farm­ers have to deal with water short­ages, but with the increased hot and dry con­di­tions fires have become another con­cern. With extreme dry heat and strong winds, even the small­est of fires can spread rapidly and with lit­tle warn­ing.

Since the begin­ning of last month, over a thou­sand fire­fight­ers, vol­un­teers and mem­bers of the South African National Defence Force have bat­tled dozens of fires, spread out over thou­sands of hectares of veg­e­ta­tion. With water scarce, fire­fight­ing air­craft are using ocean water as an extreme mea­sure to bat­tle the flames.

The fires have caused emer­gency evac­u­a­tions in many res­i­den­tial areas of the Cape, also severely impact­ing the area’s native envi­ron­ment. Many indige­nous plants, trees, and insects were destroyed, as well as baboons, tor­toises, and snakes resid­ing in and around the moun­tain ranges in the Cape Peninsula.

In terms of olive farm­ing, even the small­est loss in one of the larger estates is likely to have a sig­nif­i­cant impact on South Africa’s total olive har­vest, as the total amount of land ded­i­cated to olive pro­duc­tion on a national scale is only about 2,600 hectares, says Karien Bezuidenhout, man­ager of SA Olive and Cape Flora SA.

Currently, two major Cape estates (the Buffet Olive Estate and Morgenster Estate) have reported sig­nif­i­cant losses, with Buffet los­ing over one third of their orchards to the fires.

• Olive Boutique Riebeek Kasteel


• Greencape South Africa