A Bittersweet Harvest Season for Greek Producers

The 2021/22 crop year has come to an end in Greece, with the coun­try’s olive oil yield total­ing around 225,000 tons, an 18-per­cent reduc­tion com­pared to the 275,000 tons of 2020/21.

According to offi­cial data and esti­mates from the International Olive Council, Greece remains the third-largest pro­ducer in the Europan Union behind Spain and Italy.

However, when the wider Mediterranean region is con­sid­ered, the coun­try ranks fifth, also being sur­passed by Tunisia and Turkey.

Despite the dis­ap­point­ing yields, pro­duc­ers reported that qual­ity remained high through­out the coun­try.

“Production was lim­ited in terms of vol­ume this sea­son; how­ever, the qual­ity of the olive oil pro­duced in the coun­try was quite sat­is­fy­ing,” Vasilios Frantzolas, a qual­ity con­sul­tant and expert olive oil taster, told Olive Oil Times.

Frantzolas pointed out that the unnat­ural weather through­out the sea­son was the main rea­son for the reduced yield of the coun­try.

“In gen­eral, the olive trees had a hard time cop­ing with the tem­per­a­ture fluc­tu­a­tions dur­ing the sea­son,” he said. ​“The mild win­ter of early 2021 was fol­lowed by two frost events in March and another one in April, and the sum­mer heat­wave was the cul­mi­na­tion of the funny weather vari­a­tions.”

​“The net result was a notice­able reduc­tion in olive tree fruition in many areas of the coun­try,” Frantzolas added.

“Crete, Laconia in the Peloponnese and the Aetolia-Acarnania dis­trict in west­ern Greece had a con­sid­er­ably more pro­duc­tive sea­son than Lesvos and the dis­tricts of Chalkidiki, Messenia and Ilia.”

Energy prices, which were on the rise in Greece, espe­cially in the sec­ond half of the crop year (from January to March), were a fac­tor to con­sider for mill own­ers who have already started to ques­tion the modus operandi of the mills in the coun­try.

“If things remain unchanged, it is likely that the sta­tus of our olive oil enti­tle­ments [a per­cent­age of the olive oil pro­duced from each batch of olives with which millers in Greece are paid] will be over­turned,” said Panayiotis Zoumboulakis, head of the Sykia asso­ci­a­tion, which oper­ates a mill in Lakonia in south­ern Peloponnese.

Zoumboulakis’ words were echoed by his coun­ter­parts in other olive oil-pro­duc­ing ter­ri­to­ries.

“The sta­tus should be changed, and we should get paid accord­ing to the [quan­tity of the] olives to be processed since the out­put of olive oil is reduced due to drought,” said mill owner Aris Christopoulos from the neigh­bor­ing Messenia.

“Nowadays, olive oil pro­duc­ers do not take care of their groves as they used to in the past,” he added. ​“Many of them just har­vest their olives, neglect­ing fer­til­iz­ing and other nec­es­sary oper­a­tions in the field. So far, the increased pro­duc­tion cost has been absorbed by the mill own­ers.”

Meanwhile, the Greek gov­ern­ment has waived the excise tax on diesel fuel for farm­ers until the end of 2022.

Despite the shake-up in the global mar­ket for edi­ble oils cre­ated by the war in Ukraine, olive oil prices in Greece remain vir­tu­ally unchanged com­pared to the begin­ning of the sea­son.

According to reports in the agri­cul­tural press, pro­duc­ers’ prices in most pro­duc­ing ter­ri­to­ries, includ­ing Laconia, Messenia, Heraklion and Chania, in Crete, range from €3.30 and €3.50 per kilo­gram of low-acid­ity extra vir­gin olive oil.

Nevertheless, accord­ing to the European Commission, pro­duc­ers’ prices for extra vir­gin olive oil in Greece increased by 12 per­cent in the 2021/22 crop year com­pared to the aver­age price of the past five years.

Regarding the next crop year, the prospects are promis­ing for a sub­stan­tial yield of olive oil in the coun­try.

“We had low tem­per­a­tures in the win­ter, sig­nif­i­cant rain­falls in the begin­ning of the spring and a low pro­duc­tion in terms of quan­tity in the 2021/22 crop year,” Frantzolas said.

“All these sug­gest a strong olive oil pro­duc­tion for Greece in the next har­vest­ing sea­son, pro­vided that the fruit fly will not cause sig­nif­i­cant prob­lems.”

• Agrotypos
• Eleftheria Online