Expansion of Organic Olive Groves Slows in Spain

The amount of land ded­i­cated to organic olive cul­ti­va­tion in Spain increased by 2.3 per­cent in 2022 after expe­ri­enc­ing an explo­sive 16 per­cent increase in 2021.

According to data from Spain’s Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, 262,379 hectares of organic olive groves are now in 16 of the country’s 17 autonomous com­mu­ni­ties. The north­ern region of Cantabria remains the only Spanish com­mu­nity with­out organic olive groves.

Overall, min­istry data indi­cate that total organic land cul­ti­va­tion in Spain increased by 1.5 per­cent in 2022 com­pared with 8 per­cent in 2021. After nat­ural grass­lands and nuts, olives are the third-largest organ­i­cally cul­ti­vated crop in the coun­try.

However, the increase in organic olive cul­ti­va­tion in the world’s largest olive oil-pro­duc­ing coun­try was not uni­form. Organic olive cul­ti­va­tion rose in 13 of 16 autonomous com­mu­ni­ties.

The most sig­nif­i­cant increase in sur­face area came in Castilla-La Macha, Spain’s sec­ond-largest olive oil-pro­duc­ing region, with an expan­sion of 2,483 hectares. Meanwhile, the largest decrease came in Andalusia, the world’s largest olive oil-pro­duc­ing region, which lost 143 hectares of organic olive groves.

Far smaller decreases were also recorded in Asturias (-2.5 per­cent, less than 1 hectare) and the Canary Islands, which lost 10 hectares of organic olive groves between 2021 and 2022.

According to Juan Vilar, a strate­gic con­sul­tant for the olive oil sec­tor, some organic groves were aban­doned due to the poor har­vest of the pre­vi­ous sea­son.

He added that ris­ing olive oil prices at ori­gin have low­ered the profit mar­gin of organic olive farms com­pared to con­ven­tional ones, lead­ing more farm­ers to focus on the lat­ter.

After Castilla-La Mancha, Spain’s third and fourth largest olive-grow­ing regions, Extremadura and Catalonia saw mod­est increases.

In Valencia, where organic olive grove cul­ti­va­tion increased by 296 hectares from 2021 to 2022, local offi­cials said efforts to pro­mote organic farm­ing of all types were help­ing to stem the region’s rural exo­dus, a per­va­sive prob­lem in Spain stem­ming back to the 2008 finan­cial cri­sis.

The release of the sta­tis­tics from the agri­cul­ture min­istry came as act­ing min­is­ter Luis Planas addressed the European Congress of Organic Production in Córdoba, Andalusia.

At the event, Planas hailed the role of organic farm­ing in the fight against cli­mate change and praised the con­tro­ver­sial eco-schemes included in Spain’s national plan for the Common Agricultural Policy to increase organic cul­ti­va­tion.

According to the min­istry, three of four Spanish farm­ers and ranch­ers have taken advan­tage of the eco-schemes, which pro­vide finan­cial incen­tives for farm­ers and ranch­ers to fol­low organic prac­tices.

“Organic agri­cul­ture con­sti­tutes one of the best responses in our green pact to achieve the sus­tain­abil­ity of our agri­cul­tural pro­duc­tion from an eco­nomic, social, human and envi­ron­men­tal point of view,” Planas said.

With a total of 2.7 mil­lion hectares of land cul­ti­vated organ­i­cally, Planas con­cluded that Spain is well on its way to achiev­ing the European Green Deal objec­tive of hav­ing 25 per­cent of all agri­cul­tural land in the European Union fol­low­ing organic prac­tices by 2030.

• Spanish Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food
• El País