Farmers in Hungary Make Headway in Olive Cultivation

As Europe gets warmer, olive trees have begun to take root in unlikely regions away from their tra­di­tional grow­ing areas around the Mediterranean.

In the cen­tral European coun­try of Hungary, olive trees have found a fer­tile home on the south­ern slopes sur­round­ing Lake Balaton, one of the coun­try’s major wine-pro­duc­ing regions and a pop­u­lar tourist des­ti­na­tion.

“The area fea­tures a unique micro­cli­mate and is incred­i­bly pic­turesque,” 55-year-old local wine­maker and olive oil pro­ducer Csaba Török told Olive Oil Times.

“It is sur­rounded by the Witness Hills that emerged from the remains of the ancient Pannonian Sea, and the soil here is rich in vol­canic mate­r­ial,” he added.

Török noted that, as south­ern Europe becomes warmer and drier, areas suit­able for olive cul­ti­va­tion are shift­ing north­wards.

According to the European Environment Agency, Europe is the fastest-warm­ing con­ti­nent. Extreme weather events, such as heat­waves and droughts, are expected to worsen.

Over the last two decades, south­ern Hungary has also expe­ri­enced milder win­ters and warmer sum­mers. Scientific research has also found that Lake Balaton’s sur­face water tem­per­a­ture has risen by almost 2 ºC since 2000.

Török estab­lished his vine­yard and win­ery in Szent Gyorgy Hill around 20 years ago. A few years later, he planted his first three olive trees next to his vines to prove that olive cul­ti­va­tion was fea­si­ble in the area.

“When I arrived here, I planted red grape vari­eties, par­tic­u­larly Sangiovese,” Török said.
​“At the time, this area was con­sid­ered suit­able pri­mar­ily for white grape vari­eties, and many peo­ple told me that these vines would never sur­vive in this cli­mate.”

“But I proved them wrong,” he added. ​“To fur­ther demon­strate that I had made the right choice, I also planted some olive trees since Sangiovese is often cul­ti­vated along­side olives.”

Finding the most suit­able olive vari­eties to plant has been a jour­ney for Török, who even­tu­ally suc­ceeded in olive cul­ti­va­tion by trial and error.

“In my first attempt, 200 young Leccino trees, then 15 years old, froze dur­ing the win­ter — a costly les­son,” he said. ​“But I started again, and the cur­rent state of my plan­ta­tion has taken shape over the past eight to ten years. I made more informed deci­sions and learned a great deal about these trees along the way.”

Török’s vine­yard and olive grove stretch across six hectares and com­prises over 60 olive trees of var­i­ous olive vari­eties, includ­ing the Spanish Picual and Arbequina, the French Aglandu and Mouflal and Leccino from Italy.

The grove also con­tains three olive cul­ti­vars native to the Balkans: Oblica and Bjelica from Croatia and Carolea from Slovenia. Around a dozen of the olive trees Török that grows are between 50 and 400 years old, while the rest are 10 years old.

In 2020, Török became the first in Hungary to pro­duce olive oil from locally har­vested olives. This crop year, he achieved his most abun­dant yield.

“I man­aged to har­vest my high­est yield this year, 232 kilo­grams, the high­est in Hungary,” he said. ​“As my younger trees con­tinue to grow, I believe dou­bling the yield is real­is­tic.”

Although the weather is becom­ing milder in the area, win­ter tem­per­a­tures often drop below freez­ing, pos­ing a sig­nif­i­cant chal­lenge for Török.

“The biggest prob­lem is the win­ter cold,” he said. ​“At my estate, the low­est tem­per­a­ture recorded in the past 15 years was –14.7 ºC, and even then, it lasted only for an hour. Typically, it doesn’t drop below – 10 ºC.”

“I believe the best sites for grape grow­ing – those with the ideal angle, ori­en­ta­tion, ele­va­tion, and other fac­tors – are also the most suit­able for grow­ing olives, pro­vid­ing con­sis­tent fruit pro­duc­tion year after year,” he added.

Depending on the vari­ety, olive trees can tol­er­ate tem­per­a­tures as low as – 12 ºC. However, pro­longed expo­sure to freez­ing tem­per­a­tures below –7 ºC can seri­ously dam­age them.

Török also noted that in the last three years, many farm­ers near Lake Balaton have started to grow olive trees, albeit some of them only for dec­o­ra­tive pur­poses.

“It feels like I was the one who switched on the green light,” he said. ​“However, many of those who grow olive trees lack pro­fes­sional knowl­edge. They plant olives sim­ply because they love them, not because they want to make a liv­ing from them.”

Olive farm­ing has expanded to more regions in south­ern Hungary. Southeast of Lake Balaton, near Pécs, gar­dener and farmer Gabor Stix has been grow­ing olive trees for nearly two decades.

“[Olive trees] are one of the most grate­ful plants I have dealt with so far,” Stix told Hungarian online pub­li­ca­tion Zöld Hang. ​“We have clay soil, which suits them per­fectly. Their water needs are not spe­cial either; we get as much water as they need.”

Stix’s olive trees are chiefly des­tined for sell­ing, and he expects to sell all of his trees by March. He also pro­duces small quan­ti­ties of olive oil locally using a ham­mer mill to crush the olives and a wine press to extract the oil from the olive pulp.

Stix attrib­uted the endurance of the olive trees he grows and sells to their local breed­ing and the adap­ta­tion of the young trees to local weather con­di­tions.

“It works because we sell plants that we pro­duce our­selves,” he said. ​“Acclimatization is impor­tant because the trees learn how cold it was the pre­vi­ous year and develop accord­ingly the fol­low­ing year.”

“So far, not much oil has been pro­duced in Hungary, but the mod­est quan­tity is of a very good qual­ity,” Stix added. ​“The price of one liter of olive oil pro­duced in Hungary is around 45,000 to 50,000 forints [approx­i­mately €109 to €121]. It seems unbe­liev­able, but peo­ple still buy it.”

“We already have larger plan­ta­tions in our coun­try,” he con­cluded. ​“I think it’s a great advan­tage here in Hungary that we have such oppor­tu­ni­ties.”

• Zöld Hang
• European Environmental Agency
• Hungarian Research Network