Initial Estimates Forecast 1M Tons of Olive Oil Production in Spain

Spanish olive grow­ers have expressed low expec­ta­tions for the com­ing har­vest.

Plagued by a pro­longed and severe drought and a series of heat­waves, agri­cul­ture in Spain is fac­ing one of the most chal­leng­ing moments in recent years.

Some experts believe that olive yields in the world’s largest olive oil-pro­duc­ing nation will also sig­nif­i­cantly drop.

The Minister of Agriculture Luis Planas pub­licly warned that olive pro­duc­tion would slow down. Kyle Holland, an ana­lyst at the research group Mintec, pre­dicted a 25 to 30-per­cent yield reduc­tion is highly prob­a­ble.

Last year, Spain pro­duced 1.3 mil­lion tons of olive oil, accord­ing to the International Olive Council fig­ures, slightly below the 1.37 mil­lion tons of the five-year rolling aver­age.

The Association of Young Farmers and Ranchers (Asaja) in Andalusia esti­mates that Spain will pro­duce 1 mil­lion tons of olive oil in the cur­rent crop year.

However, Primitivo Fernández, the direc­tor of the National Association of Industrial Packers and Refiners of Edible Oils, said the coun­try has more than 500,000 tons in its stocks, which will meet demand on the national and inter­na­tional mar­kets.

Asaja said the drought has reduced the resilience of non-irri­gated groves to the effects of the heat­waves. Furthermore, the reduced amount of water for irri­ga­tion also was unable to meet the needs of the irri­gated olive groves.

Decreasing water avail­abil­ity for irri­ga­tion will weigh on the final pro­duc­tion fig­ures as nearly 30 per­cent of the country’s olive groves are irri­gated, accord­ing to esti­mates from Juan Vilar Strategic Consultants.

Most irri­gated groves are cul­ti­vated under high-den­sity (inten­sive) and super-high-den­sity (super-inten­sive) regimes. While rep­re­sent­ing about one-third of the total olive grow­ing sur­face area, irri­gated groves con­sti­tute a dis­pro­por­tion­ately large amount of total olive oil pro­duc­tion in Spain.

The chal­leng­ing cli­mate is hit­ting all olive-grow­ing regions, espe­cially Andalusia. The south­ern autonomous com­mu­nity rep­re­sents 75 per­cent of Spanish olive pro­duc­tion and is bear­ing the brunt of the impacts of cli­mate change.

Andalusian olive oil pro­duc­tion by value has steadily increased in recent years, fuel­ing regional devel­op­ment. However, it is heav­ily reliant on water avail­abil­ity.

For exam­ple, La Vinuela, a reser­voir in Málaga, is now so low author­i­ties esti­mate it will remain at 11 per­cent of its total capac­ity until the end of August.

With its water reserves at a his­tor­i­cal low, the area is also suf­fer­ing from unprece­dented dry con­di­tions. A recent study pub­lished in Nature Geoscience demon­strates that the Iberian penin­sula has not expe­ri­enced such extreme drought con­di­tions in the last 1,200 years.

According to Holland, the Mintec ana­lyst, Spain’s extreme heat may also pose prob­lems for the qual­ity of the olive har­vest along with the quan­tity.

“There are also major wor­ries in the mar­ket regard­ing the qual­ity of the com­ing crop and what pro­por­tion of the crop will make extra vir­gin or vir­gin grades and how much will be classed as lam­pante,” he said. Lampante is a cat­e­gory of olive oil that can­not be safely con­sumed unless it is refined.

Carlos Oliva, the sales man­ager at Finca La Barca, an estate near Toledo in Extremadura, told Olive Oil Times that the cur­rent sea­son is espe­cially chal­leng­ing. Still, they expect the qual­ity to be as high as ever.

“The new har­vest will be low in terms of the quan­tity of olives, but we think we will get good qual­ity,” he said. ​“The heat­waves are always a prob­lem for any agri­cul­tural crop, but we have to get used to them because the next sum­mers will be the same or even worse.”

Oliva added that the cur­rent drought empha­sized the need for Spain to develop a mean­ing­ful pub­lic strat­egy to address cli­mate change.

“We live in one of the poor­est areas of Spain, and our gov­ern­ment is not doing enough to fight the chal­leng­ing cli­mate,” he said. ​“Our com­pany is work­ing on new approaches to improve the har­vest qual­ity despite the heat­waves.”

“We think that the weather will affect all crops, and gov­ern­ments should invest large quan­ti­ties of money now to improve the agri­cul­tural meth­ods of work and fight against cli­mate change,” he added. ​“Every minute counts.”

As the effects of cli­mate change on Spain’s olive groves con­tinue unfurl­ing, researchers are actively work­ing to find new solu­tions for adapt­ing to the new con­di­tions.

“In the last few years, we have incor­po­rated the adap­ta­tion to cli­mate change as one of the main objec­tives in our breed­ing work,” said Lorenzo León Moreno, a research direc­tor of plant breed­ing and biotech­nol­ogy at the Andalusian Institute of Agricultural and Fisheries Research and Training (Ifapa) in Córdoba.

Drought and heat waves have become the most con­se­quen­tial man­i­fes­ta­tions of cli­mate change to affect Spain’s olive grow­ers.

Moreno said Córdoba, one of the most pro­duc­tive olive-grow­ing provinces in Andalusia, received 386 mil­lime­ters of rain last year, com­pared to 1,269 mil­lime­ters of water evap­o­ra­tion and tran­spi­ra­tion.

This hap­pened ​“with only six days of rain­fall higher than 20 mil­lime­ters and no rain since the begin­ning of May,” Moreno told Olive Oil Times. ​“Heat stress also had an impact over the past months, with max­i­mum tem­per­a­tures exceed­ing 40 ºC through­out this period.”

“This com­bi­na­tion will sig­nif­i­cantly reduce the com­ing crop in many areas, par­tic­u­larly those under rain­fed pro­duc­tion, where olive is cur­rently just fight­ing for sur­viv­ing,” he added.

Researchers believe the cur­rent highly uncer­tain cli­matic sce­nario does not allow accu­rate pre­dic­tions.

“Some sim­u­la­tions for the end of the 21^st cen­tury, even fore­cast yield increases due to the pos­i­tive impact of the increase in atmos­pheric CO2 that coun­ter­bal­anced the neg­a­tive impacts of the reduc­tion in rain­fall,” Moreno said.

“From our breed­ing per­spec­tive, we can also work on new adap­ta­tion strate­gies in the form of new cul­ti­vars that are more resilient to higher tem­per­a­tures and lower water avail­abil­ity,” he added.

“Unfortunately, the infor­ma­tion about the tol­er­ance of dif­fer­ent cul­ti­vars to these fac­tors is quite lim­ited, so more research will be needed in the com­ing years to face these chal­lenges of cli­matic change,” Moreno con­tin­ued.

The Ifapa researcher added how olive phe­nol­ogy and flow­er­ing, above all, are highly affected by cli­matic con­di­tions.

“Climatic mod­els fore­cast an advance in the olive flow­er­ing dates in the com­ing years and an increase in the fre­quency of extreme events around the flow­er­ing period,” Moreno said.

“This could trans­late into two highly neg­a­tive poten­tial effects for olive pro­duc­tion: the lack of chill­ing hours needed for nor­mal flow­er­ing and the occur­rence of high tem­per­a­tures dur­ing the flow­er­ing hin­der­ing pol­li­na­tion and fruit set,” he added.

Moreno also con­firmed that extra vir­gin olive oil qual­ity is expected to be influ­enced by the chang­ing cli­mate.

He said olive trees grow­ing in coun­tries and regions where tem­per­a­tures are higher than the Mediterranean aver­age dur­ing the lipo­ge­n­e­sis process ​“have already high­lighted the mod­i­fi­ca­tion of some chem­i­cal com­po­nents that deter­mine the qual­ity of extra vir­gin olive oil.”

“For instance, for fatty acid com­po­si­tion, a sig­nif­i­cant decrease in the per­cent­age of oleic acid has been observed, which can com­pro­mise the com­mer­cial qual­ity of the obtained olive oils,” Moreno added.

“From a breed­ing per­spec­tive, it would there­fore be advis­able to obtain new cul­ti­vars with a high and sta­ble oleic acid con­tent under dif­fer­ent envi­ron­men­tal con­di­tions, par­tic­u­larly increase in tem­per­a­tures pre­dicted by cli­mate change mod­els,” he con­tin­ued.

“The poten­tial effect on other qual­ity com­po­nents is unclear,” he added. ​“Thus, pre­dicted heat and water stress could increase phe­nol con­tent, although more exper­i­men­ta­tion is needed to accu­rately deter­mine the influ­ence of cli­mate change on phe­nol con­tent and com­po­si­tion.”

Ifapa recently started work on a new research project to deter­mine the genetic and envi­ron­men­tal influ­ences on phe­nol con­tent in olive oil.

“The influ­ence of high tem­per­a­tures dur­ing har­vest sea­son on the organolep­tic prop­er­ties of the extra vir­gin olive oil is also of seri­ous con­cern in the pre­vi­ous years, pro­mot­ing the devel­op­ment of refrig­er­a­tion sys­tems to be used at indus­trial lev­els.”

Given the cur­rent sce­nario and the grow­ing impacts of cli­mate change on olive farm­ing, Moreno stressed ​“the urgent need for improv­ing the cur­rently avail­able knowl­edge on these impor­tant top­ics, which could only be achieved by sig­nif­i­cantly increased research and devel­op­ment fund­ing in the com­ing years.”

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