Italian Growers Face Disappointing Yields

Italian grow­ers across the penin­sula are report­ing lower-than-expected olive oil pro­duc­tion vol­umes as the har­vest sea­son enters full swing.

In some cases, large vol­umes of olives do not deliver the usual yields, while in oth­ers, typ­i­cal yields come from fewer olives.

Producers in the north of the coun­try lament con­ver­sion yields well below aver­age.

“This year, I har­vested sig­nif­i­cantly more olives in our north­ern groves than in the south­ern ones,” said Pietro Polizzi, owner of Olio Enotre, which has groves in Veneto in the north and Calabria in the south.

“The olives were healthy, with no signs of olive fruit fly,” he added. ​“However, the prob­lem lies in con­ver­sion yields, which were unusu­ally low – around seven to eight per­cent.” 

Conversion yields refer to the amount of olive oil extracted from 100 kilo­grams of olives. A seven per­cent yield means seven kilo­grams of olive oil are obtained from milling 100 kilo­grams of olives.

“These low con­ver­sion rates will inevitably affect the final prod­uct price. On the bright side, the qual­ity remains very high,” Polizzi said.

Ceil Friedman, the co-owner of Erminio Cordioli in the Verona area of Veneto, also lamented lower-than-expect yields from her har­vest.

“The olives were beau­ti­ful, and we are delighted with the qual­ity of the oil,” she said. ​“It was tough work, espe­cially with rain­fall fre­quently inter­rupt­ing the har­vest. Yet, we were caught off guard by the lower-than-expected yields.”

“This issue is affect­ing all the pro­duc­ers in the area, I can assure you,” Friedman added. ​“Varieties like the local Grignano usu­ally yield about ten per­cent, but this time, it reached six.”

Furio Battelini, the tech­ni­cal direc­tor at Agraria Riva del Garda, whose groves are sit­u­ated just above Lake Garda, also observed unex­pect­edly low yields.

“We expe­ri­enced fairly abun­dant olive pro­duc­tion this year, as the con­di­tions since spring were favor­able,” he said. ​“The olive fruit fly did not recover from the peak sum­mer heat in August so that it could­n’t cause dam­age.” 

“Yet, we’ve seen very low yields at the mill, down to eight per­cent, whereas we typ­i­cally expect some­thing between 14 and 15 per­cent,” he added.

Battelini attrib­uted this phe­nom­e­non to the weather pat­terns since September when sunny days became rare. ​“The lack of sun­light likely affected the ripen­ing of the olives, pre­vent­ing them from reach­ing full matu­rity,” he said.

According to Battelini, pro­duc­ers focused on qual­ity should still opt for an early har­vest in such con­di­tions, as wait­ing can decrease the oil’s phe­no­lic con­tent. 

“We also expe­ri­enced heavy rain­fall, which pre­ma­turely caused olives to fall from the trees,” he said. ​“Those who did­n’t har­vest early likely lost a sig­nif­i­cant amount of fruit.” 

“The low yields have damp­ened the typ­i­cally joy­ful har­vest sea­son for many,” Battelini added. ​“The olive oil qual­ity remains excel­lent, with very ele­gant and clean pro­files. However, it’s a shame that we won’t be able to fill our stor­age tanks this year.”

In cen­tral Italy, pro­duc­tion vol­umes are report­edly sat­is­fy­ing, but lower con­ver­sion yields are puz­zling grow­ers, as large, healthy olives retain a lot of water. Once pressed, oil yields are lower than antic­i­pated.

Producers in this region attribute this to the abun­dant and pro­longed rains in early autumn after a hot, dry sum­mer.

“Our early har­vest usu­ally results in lower yields, but this year, we’re down to half the usual,” said Marco Prosseda of DueNoveSei, a com­pany in Moricone in the heart of Lazio’s Roman Sabina.

“After a favor­able sum­mer, per­sis­tent rains arrived in September and October, caus­ing the olives to swell with water,” he added. ​“Ironically, despite an abun­dance of fruit, 30 per­cent more than last year, we’re pro­duc­ing nearly as much oil as last year but with sig­nif­i­cantly more olives.” 

Midway through the har­vest, clear trends have emerged, accord­ing to Prosseda. 

“First, the groves are laden with beau­ti­ful, healthy olives; sec­ond, we’re pro­duc­ing high-qual­ity prod­ucts with great organolep­tic and nutraceu­ti­cal pro­files; third, from 100 kilo­grams of fruit, we’re extract­ing just nine liters of oil, a nine per­cent yield, when we usu­ally reach around 15 per­cent.”

A sim­i­lar sit­u­a­tion can be observed in Montelibretti, another Roman Sabina town where Antonio Mancini co-man­ages the Marcoaldi Roberta farm.

“The har­vest is pro­gress­ing well, with many healthy olives on the trees,” Mancini said. ​“We expect one of our best-qual­ity har­vests in recent years.”

“However, heavy rains ten days ago hit the olives at their peak, caus­ing them to swell,” he added. ​“After months of drought, their vol­umes dou­bled in just 12 to 24 hours, and their weight increased due to water absorp­tion.”

Further north in the region of Tuscia, Pietro Re, founder of Tamìa, cul­ti­vates sev­eral olive vari­eties that yielded a plen­ti­ful har­vest and opti­mal qual­ity, though with lower yields.

“Every olive oil sea­son has its own story, with new chal­lenges each year, and this one is no excep­tion,” Re said.

In Tuscany, Simone Botti of Le Fontacce in the Arezzo area attrib­utes the low yields to drought.

“We began har­vest­ing Leccino, an early vari­ety, on October 16^th, obtain­ing a six per­cent yield,” he said. ​“Now, as we work on a blend of Moraiolo, Leccino and Frantoio, we’re achiev­ing yields of 8.5 to nine per­cent, com­pared to our pre­vi­ous aver­age of 13 per­cent.”

According to Botti, the fre­quent and severe sum­mer droughts have affected yields. He believes the dry sum­mer months affected fruit devel­op­ment, result­ing in a dis­pro­por­tion­ate ratio of pit to pulp, with more pit and less pulp.

“Due to the dry sum­mer, oil accu­mu­la­tion didn’t occur at the right time,” he explained. ​“When the rains finally arrived, they were too late.”

Massimo Ragno, panel leader and pur­chas­ing man­ager at Monini, noted that lower-than-expected yields across cen­tral Italy were due to sig­nif­i­cant rain­fall, fol­lowed by warm tem­per­a­tures, which slowed the dry­ing process and increased the water con­tent in olives.

“Olive quan­ti­ties and qual­ity were excel­lent this year, with no fruit fly,” added Alessandro Melchiorri, owner of Melchiorri Olio in Spoleto, Umbria. ​“However,rain­fall at the end of October delayed the har­vest and kept yields low, between eight and 11 per­cent. This will inevitably impact prices, and it won’t be easy to explain to cus­tomers.” 

“Compared to last year, we’re see­ing sig­nif­i­cantly more olives, but given the low yields, it’s still hard to pre­dict the season’s over­all out­come,” he said.

Ragno empha­sized the impact of the intense rain­fall both before and dur­ing the har­vest. 

“Olive oil forms between August and September. After that period, it’s mostly the water con­tent that changes,” he said. ​“When it rains, olive trees can effi­ciently use the water, which leads to good yields.” 

“However, if heavy rains come just before the har­vest, as was the case in sev­eral areas, this process is dis­rupted, and the water ends up sat­u­rat­ing the fruits,” Ragno added. ​“In some cases, yields were lower because the olives con­tained way more water than usual.”

“Central-north­ern pro­duc­tion, par­tic­u­larly in Tuscany and Lazio, is still pro­gress­ing well in terms of qual­ity and quan­tity,” he noted.

Comforting news also came from the cen­tral-south­ern region of Molise. 

“The har­vest is pro­gress­ing smoothly, even though vol­umes are slightly lower com­pared to the best sea­sons, largely due to weather con­di­tions,” said Marina Colonna, owner of Colonna Farm.

“The yields are aver­age, but the qual­ity is excel­lent,” she said. ​“The olives have retained intense organolep­tic char­ac­ter­is­tics, pro­duc­ing olive oil with a rich, com­plex aro­matic pro­file. This year’s oils have more pro­nounced green notes and a per­sis­tent spici­ness.”

In the south­ern regions, where most of the country’s olive oil is tra­di­tion­ally pro­duced, grow­ers faced chal­lenges due to scorch­ing and dry con­di­tions through­out the sea­son. Moreover, this year is an ​‘off-year’ in the alter­nate bear­ing cycle of olive trees, result­ing in less fruit.

In Puglia, the country’s most sig­nif­i­cant olive oil-pro­duc­ing region, con­ver­sion yields are between 12 and 16 per­cent. However, the reduced vol­ume of fruit is affect­ing over­all pro­duc­tion lev­els.

“We esti­mate that Puglia will pro­duce less than half of its usual out­put,” Ragno said. ​“The com­bi­na­tion of the alter­nate bear­ing cycle and adverse con­di­tions dur­ing flow­er­ing, along with a very dry sea­son, has severely impacted pro­duc­tion.”

Despite these chal­lenges, some qual­ity grow­ers have man­aged to adapt. 

“Thanks to inten­sive agro­nomic prac­tices, we’ve achieved good results in terms of qual­ity and quan­tity,” said Emmanuel Sanarica, owner of Sanarica Farm.

“The use of fore­cast­ing sys­tems and envi­ron­men­tal sen­sors has allowed us to main­tain pro­duc­tion lev­els con­sis­tent with pre­vi­ous years,” he added, under­scor­ing technology’s cru­cial role in adapt­ing to cli­mate unpre­dictabil­ity.

“High tem­per­a­tures through­out the phe­no­log­i­cal stages were a major chal­lenge, even affect­ing the har­vest, which we started 30 days ear­lier than usual, sac­ri­fic­ing yields,” Sanarica explained. ​“Nonetheless, we’ve man­aged to pro­duce highly aro­matic oils rich in polyphe­nols.”

Growers encoun­tered sim­i­lar dif­fi­cul­ties in the south­ern region of Calabria, Italy’s sec­ond-largest olive oil-pro­duc­ing area.

“In our region, we’re see­ing a sig­nif­i­cant drop in olive vol­umes, down to about ten per­cent of what we expected. Fortunately, the qual­ity remains opti­mal,” said Diego Fazio, the co-owner of Tre Olive.

The sil­ver lin­ing is that con­ver­sion yields are higher than last sea­son. ​“This allows us to main­tain a very high stan­dard of qual­ity for our extra vir­gin olive oil, even if quan­ti­ties are lim­ited,” Fazio added.

“Drought dur­ing the sum­mer forced us to imple­ment emer­gency irri­ga­tion, espe­cially for younger trees,” added Maria Cristina Di Giovanni, owner at Podere d’Ippolito.

Most pro­duc­ers in the plains of Lamezia Terme reported decent yields, though the num­ber of olives is sig­nif­i­cantly reduced.

“Some of our farms suf­fered con­sid­er­able dam­age due to flood­ing and heavy rain­fall at the end of October, which severely tested the resilience of our grow­ers dur­ing the olive oil cam­paign,” Di Giovanni said.

“Our grow­ers also had to man­age over­flow­ing streams and land­slides that obstructed access routes,” she added. ​“We’re now wrap­ping up har­vest­ing and pro­cess­ing oper­a­tions to ensure that our cus­tomers con­tinue to receive the high­est qual­ity extra vir­gin olive oil.”