Olive Oil Producers in Greece Brace for Steep Production Decline

While the next olive har­vest is expected to begin in Greece in two months, olive oil pro­duc­ers across the coun­try are dis­heart­ened by the prob­lems afflict­ing their groves.

“There is high anx­i­ety about the out­come of the com­ing crop,” Ioannis Kampouris, a pro­ducer based in the Korinthia region in the north­east­ern Peloponnese, told Olive Oil Times. ​“The low fruition and the fruit fly will be at the fore­front of the olive har­vest.”

According to the regional gov­ern­ment, the fruit set­ting of the olive trees is sig­nif­i­cantly reduced across the penin­sula ahead of the 2023/24 crop year.

“I want to say from the out­set that there is a big prob­lem for both [the olive trees] fruit set­ting and viti­cul­ture,” said deputy gov­er­nor Stathis Anastasopoulos in a regional coun­cil meet­ing early this month.

“[The reduced] fruition case refers to both table olives, where the sit­u­a­tion is more seri­ous, and olives des­tined for olive oil pro­duc­tion,” he added. ​“All these prob­lems are the result of cli­mate change, the changes we all see every day.”

Kampouris echoed the words of the deputy gov­er­nor, also pro­ject­ing a sig­nif­i­cant reduc­tion in the country’s over­all olive oil pro­duc­tion com­pared to last year’s boun­ti­ful yield of more than 300,000 tons.

“The Peloponnese will expe­ri­ence a late olive har­vest due to the pre­vail­ing weather con­di­tions,” he said. ​“In advance, some pro­duc­ing ter­ri­to­ries [on the penin­sula] are hav­ing prob­lems with the fruit fly, while oth­ers suf­fer from a lack of fruition. This is the case in our region also.”

“Greece will likely yield approx­i­mately 200,000 tons of olive oil this sea­son,” Kampouris added. ​“This is partly due to the high pro­duc­tion of the last crop year and partly to the impact of the fruit fly and the reduced fruition this year.”

Across the penin­sula, in the south­east­ern Laconia region, the fruit fly is already threat­en­ing the region’s olive har­vest.

“The weather con­di­tions have favored the fruit fly to man­i­fest itself in large parts of the region’s olive groves,” said Ioannis Rallis of the local agri­cul­ture depart­ment.

“Any pes­ti­cide oper­a­tions should be cau­tious and well-coor­di­nated this sea­son,” he added. ​“The pos­i­tive thing is that [the olive trees] are hav­ing a late flow­er­ing and fruit­ing this year.”

Meanwhile, on Crete, experts have warned of one of the island’s worst crop years ever recorded.

“Advise peo­ple to save this year’s oil to use it next year as well,” Manolis Gelasakis, a now-retired agron­o­mist who over­saw olive fruit fly con­tain­ment oper­a­tions on Crete for many years, told local media.

“For as long as I have been alive, I can­not remem­ber a worse year than this one, at least in Viannos [a munic­i­pal­ity near Heraklion] and on the wider coastal front,” he added.

“The tem­per­a­ture rose sharply after the recent rains,” Gelasakis con­tin­ued. ​“And the first flow­ers of the olive trees were burned and fell off. Now, the same olive trees are flow­er­ing again. We won’t have any olives next year, as far as our area is con­cerned.”

According to Vaggelis Protogerakis, the head of the olive oil pro­duc­ers’ asso­ci­a­tion of Heraklion, the upcom­ing har­vest is expected to be dis­tress­ing for pro­duc­ers across the island.

“There are prob­lems in many pro­duc­ing ter­ri­to­ries of Crete,” he said. ​“Everywhere we see partheno­carpy [the devel­op­ment of the olive fruit with­out fer­til­iza­tion] and dou­ble fruition. Many olive trees started to blos­som too early because of the warm weather.”

Protogerakis called on the local author­i­ties to start doc­u­ment­ing the inflicted dam­age on the island’s olive trees.

He also expressed con­cerns about whether the high pro­ducer prices, around €6 per kilo­gram of low-acid­ity extra vir­gin olive oil, will be main­tained on the island.

“It would be a pity to lose the olive har­vest this year since we were expect­ing to get even higher prices at the open­ing of the sea­son,” he said.

The issue of reduced fruition is also evi­dent in the olive groves of Lesbos, where the adverse weather has upset the pro­duc­tion cycle of the island’s olive trees.

“Winters on Lesbos have been dry and warm dur­ing the last three years,” Stratis Sloumatis of the Stypsi asso­ci­a­tion of pro­duc­ers in the north of the island told Olive Oil Times.

“Consequently, the blos­som­ing of the olive trees is reduced,” he added. ​“Even worse, not all blos­soms trans­form into olive fruits in the end. We are start­ing to see con­sec­u­tive years of lower than usual olive oil yields.”

“Nevertheless, based on the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion of our groves, we expect the whole island to fare a lit­tle bet­ter this year com­pared to last season’s very poor olive har­vest,” Sloumatis con­tin­ued.

In Thrace, the north­ern­most region of Greece where olives are cul­ti­vated, the upcom­ing har­vest is also expected to be far from sub­stan­tial, with the olive trees being affected by an intense lack of fruition.

“Despite the abun­dant spring rains, the com­ing crop year will be almost com­pletely empty due to extremely low fruition,” Dimitrios Adamidis of Konos, a pro­ducer near the city of Alexandroupolis, told Olive Oil Times. ​“I would describe it as cat­a­strophic.”

The area is home to Makri olives, an indige­nous olive cul­ti­var that yields the Protected Designation of Origin-cer­ti­fied Makri olive oil.

Adamidis asserted that the absence of olives from the trees is not due to the ​‘on and off years’ in olive oil pro­duc­tion but to the area’s olive trees being severely impacted by the warmer-than-usual weather dom­i­nat­ing the area.

“We always take good care of our trees to avoid any seri­ous alter­na­tions in fruit bear­ing year after year,” he said. ​“The rea­son for the expected heav­ily reduced olive yield is the unnat­u­rally warm weather. Makri trees, more than other olive cul­ti­vars, need a sub­stan­tial amount of chill hours in win­ter to be able to bear fruit in spring, which they sim­ply did not get.”

“We have also estab­lished a one-night har­vest­ing event here under the full moon in win­ter, which will be going on for the fourth con­sec­u­tive year,” he con­cluded. ​“Our main inten­tion is to com­mu­ni­cate our con­cerns about the ris­ing tem­per­a­tures to every­body.”

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