Olive Harvest in France Threatened by Drought

A pro­longed drought in the French depart­ment of Alpes-de-Haute-Provence is threat­en­ing the olive har­vest which has just begun in the region.

France’s south­east­ern region has been expe­ri­enc­ing a pro­longed drought, with soil humid­ity lev­els down by 70 per­cent. Precipitation has been lower than aver­age for most of 2016, and water-sav­ing mea­sures have been imposed in some areas.
See Also:Complete Coverage of the 2016/2017 Olive Harvest
Though olive trees can resist drought-like con­di­tions, a pro­longed lack of water affects the olive fruit because the tree sheds part of its crop so that it can sur­vive. ​“Trees have also been affected by a cold spring sea­son that delayed the flow­er­ing and pol­li­na­tion stages,” Olivier Nasles, pres­i­dent of the French Interprofessional Olive Association (Afidol) told La Provence. ​“There will be fewer olives this year: We’ll prob­a­bly get 3500 to 4000 tons of olive oil, com­pared to the 5600 tons we had last year…”

Olive grow­ers in the neigh­bor­ing Vaucluse depart­ment, where rain has also been sparse, are suf­fer­ing a sim­i­lar fate. ​“Since January, we’ve had only 300 mil­lime­ters of rain, which is less than half of the aver­age,” pointed out Eric Mathieu, pres­i­dent of GOV, a group of olive grow­ers in Vaucluse. ​“Growers here are not expect­ing a good har­vest, in con­trast to last year which pro­duced a record crop of 700 tons of oil.”

Mathieu esti­mates that in Vaucluse, this year’s yield will come to 300 tons at the most: ​“Olives won’t even be picked in the old groves that are not irri­gated, while in oth­ers, the olives are very small, or there are none at all.”

Growers who do have irri­ga­tion sys­tems in place, are expect­ing a nor­mal har­vest. But com­pared to last year’s bumper crop, olive grow­ers in the south of France are fac­ing a mediocre to aver­age har­vest at best.

• France TV


• La Provence


• La Provence


• Haute Provence Info