After Slow Start, South African Producers Celebrate Record Harvest

When South African pro­duc­ers started har­vest­ing in late February, the yield was not expected to sur­pass last year’s total.

However, the 2021 har­vest is now on par with 2020, in which 1.5 mil­lion liters of extra vir­gin olive oil were pro­duced, and some are call­ing it a record har­vest.

Vittoria Jooste, man­ager of the South African Olive Industry Association (SA Olive), orig­i­nally esti­mated the yield would reach 1.36 mil­lion liters, but has since revised her esti­mate.

“[The har­vest is] broadly in line with last year,” she told Olive Oil Times. ​“Our cur­rent esti­mate for the 2021 har­vest is 1.6 mil­lion liters of olive oil.”

Jooste added that 113 extra vir­gin olive oils have been entered into the SA Olive Awards, which ​“is a good indi­ca­tion of the qual­ity of the 2021 South African extra vir­gin olive oils.”

Nick Wilkinson, who co-owns the Rio Largo Olive Estate with his wife, Brenda, in the Western Cape province’s Scherpenheuwel Valley, said they had an ​“excel­lent har­vest in both quan­tity and qual­ity.”

“The crop is three times higher than last year’s crop and our best ever, some 30 per­cent higher than the long-term aver­age before the drought,” he said. ​“We have finally recov­ered from the last four years of poor rain­fall with a record crop, despite the chal­lenges of load shed­ding [a South African term for power cuts] and Covid-19 dis­tanc­ing require­ments.”

“We suf­fered elec­tric­ity out­ages due to the national sup­plier hav­ing reg­u­lar shut­downs, which meant pro­duc­tion had to stop dur­ing these times, which made for a night­mare in plan­ning to ensure all olives har­vested were processed timeously [in a timely man­ner],” Wilkinson added.

Earlier this year, Wilkinson told Olive Oil Times the power cuts had forced them to invest in backup gen­er­a­tors, which had ​“a mate­r­ial effect on costs of pro­duc­tion.”

Wilkinson said the har­vest took longer than usual as they were lim­ited in terms of labor num­bers to keep proper sep­a­ra­tion and hygiene pro­to­cols in place, which slowed down their rate of pick­ing each day.

He also noted the national increase of farm­work­ers’ wages on March 1 as a con­cern.

“Government saw fit to increase our wage rates by over 16 per­cent, while infla­tion is around four per­cent, cou­pled with a 15 per­cent increase in elec­tric­ity rates – add power out­ages to this,” Wilkinson said. ​“The increased quan­tity does not off­set the increased cost of pro­duc­tion, so prof­itabil­ity is again chal­lenged when com­pared to the major European pro­duc­ers, who con­tinue to enjoy finan­cial sup­port and sub­si­dies.”

“Our qual­ity pro­file will again hope­fully deter­mine that we sell well, and at least sell at bet­ter-than-aver­age prices,” he added.

Philip King, man­ager of nearby Mardouw Olive Estate, between Swellendam and Ashton, told Olive Oil Times that his team is cel­e­brat­ing a suc­cess­ful har­vest.

“We fol­lowed last year’s record har­vest up with an above-aver­age har­vest, so we are extremely happy,” King said.

Even though the drought in the west of the coun­try ended last year, King was still con­cerned about low rain­fall ear­lier this year. As a result, the team at Mardouw started har­vest­ing slightly later than usual.

“Rainfall was an issue lead­ing up to the har­vest, but it came at the right time, and we man­aged to pull it through,” he said.

Deeper inland, De Rustica Olive Oil Estate, sit­u­ated in the semi-arid Klein Karoo, ​“had its best har­vest yet,” mar­ket­ing man­ager Precilla Steenkamp told Olive Oil Times.

“With Covid-19 restric­tions and the drought in the Klein Karoo, we pro­duced over 200,000 liters of top-qual­ity extra vir­gin olive oil,” she said. ​“Last year, our har­vest was quite poor due to sev­eral dif­fi­cult envi­ron­men­tal fac­tors. In con­trast, we are blown away by the results this year.”

“The Klein Karoo is cur­rently expe­ri­enc­ing a long drought and obvi­ously this has an impact on our water infra­struc­ture,” Steenkamp added. ​“Despite this, we man­aged to ensure that all our groves received opti­mal water­ing.”

She said a new chal­lenge they faced was run­ning out of tank space to store their recently pro­duced oils, but added this is ​“a chal­lenge we hope to expe­ri­ence every year as we go from strength to strength.”

Steenkamp said although they had to adhere to Covid-19 safety reg­u­la­tions to safe­guard their staff, the har­vest at De Rustica went ahead with­out ​“too much dis­rup­tion.”

“It took a lit­tle longer than it would nor­mally have taken, but we are extremely pleased with the results,” she said.

Even though the safety reg­u­la­tions were not that dis­rup­tive, Steenkamp said the coun­try’s lock­down restric­tions ​“def­i­nitely had an impact on the sales and the logis­tics of trans­porta­tion of orders within our busi­ness.”

Unlike other olive farms, Goedgedacht, a farm-based com­mu­nity sup­port orga­ni­za­tion located near Riebeek-Kasteel in the Swartland region north of Cape Town, reported a sub­stan­dard out­come.

“​Sadly our har­vest this year was very poor,” Rob Templeton, the man­ag­ing direc­tor of Goedgedacht, told Olive Oil Times. ​“It was pri­mar­ily due to the drought con­di­tions that have pre­vailed for the last four sea­sons, mak­ing olive farm­ing extremely dif­fi­cult.”

“We did not have enough water in our dams to sup­port the trees dur­ing pit hard­en­ing and these stress­ful con­di­tions led us to lose a sig­nif­i­cant amount of fruit,” he added. ​“Luckily, with good win­ter rains this year, we have suf­fi­cient water to help sup­port a bet­ter har­vest for the 2022 har­vest sea­son.”

“We are in the process of con­vert­ing our entire olive farm­ing oper­a­tions to organic, and the team has a renewed focus on achiev­ing this objec­tive,” he added.

Templeton said the Goedgedacht team was not affected by Covid-19 restric­tions due to their reduced har­vest vol­ume.

“But Covid-19 caused chaos for our con­fer­ence cen­ter on the farm and we lost many book­ings, includ­ing 40 schools from the United Kingdom that booked to visit us late last year,” he said.

Added to the poor har­vest out­come, Templeton expressed con­cern about the demand for Goedgedacht’s prod­uct.

“This year, restau­rants have resumed oper­a­tions in South Africa, which in turn has slowed sales in retail,” he said. ​“Consumers are now watch­ing their spend­ing very care­fully, so spe­cialty food items have seen a notice­able drop in sales.”