Olive oil production will not reach 700,000 tons in the 2022/23 crop year, according to Spain’s Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food.
The ministry’s latest report, published last month, revised previous estimates down to 680,000 tons, a third below initial estimates in August.
Analysts and agricultural associations predicted the yield would fall to 1 million tons by the end of the summer. However, by November, the International Olive Council predicted that Spain would produce 780,000 tons at the start of the harvest.
See Also:Italian Farmers Take Stock of Current Harvest, Look Ahead to ChallengesNow, data from Spain’s Food Information and Control Agency (AICA) show 652,080 tons of olive oil had been produced by the end of February. The agency expects Spain to produce less than 30,000 tons in the last two months of the harvest.
Producers across Spain suffered from the devastating impacts of extreme heat waves and the historic drought, especially in the southern region of Andalusia, the world’s largest olive oil-producing region.
In May, scorching temperatures damaged the blossoms of many trees in Andalusia, causing them to wilt and not produce fruit.
Across the country, the drought, which some experts said is the worst of the past millennium, forced trees to conserve water for core functions instead of producing olives.
Along with production, olive oil sales in Spain also fell significantly in the first five months of the crop year. Provisional data from AICA show that sales reached 484,600 tons from October 2022 to February 2023, a 25-percent decrease compared to the same period in 2021/22.
As a result, imports in the first five months of the crop year rose from 95,000 in 2021/22 to 117,000 tons, a 23-percent increase.
Despite rising imports, ending stocks fell by 44 percent, slipping from 1.33 million in the previous crop year to 740,000 tons in the current one.
Meanwhile, ministry data show that exports have reached 725,000 tons in the first five months of 2022/23.
Looking ahead to the 2023/24 crop year, some producers are worried that the dry start of the year in Spain portends another below-average harvest.
Along with diminished stocks, this combination will keep pressure on global supply and has led some experts to speculate that high olive oil prices will persist for longer as a result.
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