Production Rebounds in France Amid Climatic Challenges

After a cat­a­strophic end to the 2019/20 crop year, in which the expected har­vest fell from 5,900 tons to just over 3,250 tons, olive oil pro­duc­tion in France looks set to rebound.

According to the lat­est fig­ures from the International Olive Council (IOC), France will pro­duce 5,200 tons in the cur­rent crop year. While this yield is slightly above the rolling five-year aver­age, it shows French pro­duc­tion trend­ing down­wards.

Other esti­mates are a bit more con­ser­v­a­tive, with author and Olio Nuovo Days co-founder Emmanuelle Dechelette fore­cast­ing a pro­duc­tion of 3,500 tons in an arti­cle writ­ten for Juan Vilar Strategic Consultants. France Olive, the country’s offi­cial olive oil pro­duc­ers asso­ci­a­tion, has yet to pub­lish its own pro­duc­tion fig­ures.

The pro­duc­tion rebound comes after another chal­leng­ing year, in which bad weather in the spring and sum­mer once again dam­aged olive trees across the south of the coun­try.

Producers see the increas­ingly unpre­dictable and erratic weather afflict­ing the south of France as one of the main chal­lenges going for­ward.

The Covid-19 pan­demic also caused incon­ve­niences, both in terms of the logis­tics of the har­vest as well as slow­ing sales to restau­rants and the hos­pi­tal­ity sec­tor. While the har­vest itself was not impacted by national quar­an­tines, the abil­ity to repair and replace equip­ment dur­ing the spring was.

“This is indeed what it is [another chal­leng­ing year of erratic weather], espe­cially for the ear­lier-har­vest­ing French areas and vari­eties that were hit by frost in the spring, which is a rather rare occur­rence,” said Henri Derepas, of Champsoleil, which is located in the hills near the south­east­ern city of Nice.

“Paradoxically, our Alpes-Maritimes depart­ment is doing well with good over­all pro­duc­tiv­ity this year, while fur­ther west, the year promises to be very weak,” he told Olive Oil Times. ​“This is partly due to the fact that our vari­ety is later and that, for us, the 2019/20 sea­son had been his­tor­i­cally cat­a­strophic.”

Overall, Derepas expects to har­vest about 35 tons of olives on his five-acre organic estate, of which around 12 tons will be used for table olives and the remain­ing 23 tons will be trans­formed into extra vir­gin olive oil.

This year’s har­vest rep­re­sents a sig­nif­i­cant improve­ment in terms of both quan­tity and qual­ity for Derepas, whose 2019 har­vest was dam­aged by a scorch­ing June. The unsea­son­ably hot weather dur­ing a cru­cial stage of flow­er­ing dam­aged many of the fruits and led to a pre­ma­ture fruit drop on many of his trees.

“Quality is also one of the char­ac­ter­is­tics of this sea­son and is due to a com­bi­na­tion of pos­i­tive fac­tors: rea­son­able spring rains at the right time, a dry sum­mer with­out exces­sive tem­per­a­ture, low pres­sure from the fruit fly and the absence of the Dalmaticosis fun­gus,” he said.

“The oils pro­duced to date are very har­mo­nious and com­ply with the typ­i­cal­ity of our Huile d’o­live de Nice PDO,” Derepas added.

However, the pro­ducer pointed out that not every­one had been as for­tu­nate. Just a few val­leys over from where Derepas’ groves are cul­ti­vated, Storm Alex wreaked havoc back in October.

In about 24 hours on October 2, 450 mil­lime­ters of rain fell on north­ern Italy and south­ern France, wash­ing away roads, build­ings, elec­tri­cal and tele­phone lines as well as plenty of crops.

“From an agri­cul­tural point of view, it is the veg­etable farms located at the bot­tom of the val­ley and the farms that have suf­fered,” Derepas said. ​“The fam­ily olive groves – mainly in the Roya Valley – suf­fered less because they are located on hill­sides.”

“On the other hand, due to lack of road net­work, many are no longer acces­si­ble,” he added. ​“The gusts of wind caused pre­ma­ture falls of healthy olives – up to one-third of the pro­duc­tion on the most exposed plots.”

The har­vest in these areas was also impacted by the inabil­ity of work­ers to arrive in the groves to har­vest as well as con­nec­tiv­ity prob­lems between the groves and mills.

“A week later, var­i­ous hail storms in the Paillon val­leys (fur­ther south) and the hin­ter­land of Grasse (fur­ther west) caused fur­ther dam­age to the fruits on the eve of har­vest,” Derepas said.

About 200 kilo­me­ters to the west of where Derepas har­vests his olives, Louisa Sherman, the co-owner of Domaine de Gerbaud, said she was expect­ing a small har­vest but a high-qual­ity yield this year.

“It has been a dis­as­ter for some farm­ers in France,” she told Olive Oil Times. ​“A spell of frost and unde­sir­able rains on the olive tree flow­ers dur­ing the fruit-form­ing phase was the cause of olives not form­ing.”

“We have the low­est ever result in the seven years that we have been farm­ing this prop­erty and it amounts to a third of our best har­vest level ever,” she added. ​“But, nature is kind and we have an excel­lent qual­ity oil with fine aro­mas.”

Sherman’s agri­cul­tural spe­cial­ist, François Aurouze, added that he has observed a 70 per­cent smaller har­vest in the regions of Var and Alpilles, near Marseilles, and an aver­age loss of 50 per­cent among pro­duc­ers in Luberon, far­ther west and where Domaine de Gerbaud is located.

“I think that two causes are at the ori­gin of this small har­vest: the frost of March 27 and 28, 2020 and a few days of rain at the time of flow­er­ing,” he said.

However, there is another impend­ing storm that is wor­ry­ing Sherman this year: the prospect of a ​‘no deal’ Brexit. After vot­ing to leave the European Union in 2016, the dead­line for the United Kingdom and the E.U. to reach a deal is rapidly approach­ing.

Overall, Brexit is unlikely to have a pro­found impact on the French olive oil pro­duc­tion sec­tor, as the vast major­ity of French pro­duc­tion is con­sumed domes­ti­cally. It will, how­ever, com­pli­cate Sherman’s oper­a­tion, who lives part-time in the U.K. and exports olive oil there.

“If Brexit nego­ti­a­tions fail, we face tar­iffs of around £1.05 ($1.40) per liter,” she said. ​“This could be crit­i­cal for us as French olive oil is dearer than most due to high wages in France. Premium French extra vir­gin olive oil could be fur­ther mar­gin­al­ized com­pared to Italian, Greek and Spanish olive oils [in the U.K.] due to increased prices.”

Away from the impo­si­tion of tar­iffs on goods trav­el­ing across the English Channel, the logis­tics of farm­ing in France with­out E.U. cit­i­zen­ship are also caus­ing headaches for Sherman.

“Travel and travel lim­i­ta­tions pose real prob­lems for us,” she said. ​“Unless you apply for a visa, there is a lim­ited amount of time you can be in the E.U. every six months.”

“For farm­ing pur­poses, one must be on site for cer­tain peri­ods to mon­i­tor, super­vise and just get down to some hard work,” Sherman added. ​“I will cer­tainly inquire about spe­cial dis­pen­sa­tion to non-res­i­dent farm­ers when the time comes.”

The U.K. is set to leave the E.U., de facto, on January 1. (It tech­ni­cally left on December 31, 2019, but entered a year-long tran­si­tion period in which noth­ing changed).

While there is some hope a deal can be reached before then, Sherman along with many other agri­cul­tural pro­duc­ers will be wait­ing to see what exactly the future trad­ing and travel rela­tions between the two sides will be.