Record Yields for Portugal in the 2021/22 Crop Year

Olive oil pro­duc­tion in Portugal is on pace to reach a record-high 225 mil­lion liters (230,000 tons) in the 2021/22 crop year, accord­ing to the National Institute of Statistics (INE).

INE attrib­uted the bumper har­vest to opti­mal agro-mete­o­ro­log­i­cal con­di­tions and the grow­ing role of high-den­sity and super-high-den­sity olive groves.

However, fig­ures released by Olivum show slightly lower pro­duc­tion. The local olive oil pro­duc­ers and millers asso­ci­a­tion esti­mate pro­duc­tion for the 2021/22 crop year to reach between 180,000 and 200,000 tons.

Either way, this year’s yield will set records. In the pre­vi­ous sea­son, pro­duc­tion reached 100,000 tons while 150,000 tons were reported in 2019/20, the pre­vi­ous record-high.

“In the cam­paign that has just ended, the weather con­di­tions and the near absence of pests undoubt­edly con­tributed to these very pos­i­tive results in terms of pro­duc­tion, which are effec­tively the best fig­ures ever for the sec­tor,” Gonçalo Almeida Simões, exec­u­tive direc­tor of Olivum, told Olive Oil Times.

Casa do Azeite, the local asso­ci­a­tion for pro­mot­ing olive oil and olive oil cul­ture, con­firmed the cur­rent yields rep­re­sent the largest pro­duc­tion total since the coun­try started sys­tem­at­i­cally report­ing har­vest data in 1915.

According to Mariana Matos, Casa do Azeite’s sec­re­tary-gen­eral, this could be just the begin­ning.

“Bearing in mind the strong invest­ment in new and irri­gated plan­ta­tions that Portugal has wit­nessed in the last years, espe­cially in the Alentejo region, it is esti­mated that the aver­age olive oil pro­duc­tion in Portugal could reach, in the short-medium term, 200,000 tons per year,” Matos told Olive Oil Times.

She added that pro­duc­tion could con­tinue to grow ​“as invest­ments in new plan­ta­tions con­tinue, although with a slower growth rate than what has been seen so far.”

Olive farm­ing has been a rel­e­vant part of Portuguese agri­cul­tural tra­di­tion and cul­ture for cen­turies. It is believed the first olive trees appeared in the coun­try more than 3,000 years ago.

According to data from Juan Vilar Strategic Consulting, Portugal now has 361,483 hectares of olive groves, three per­cent of the global olive grow­ing area.

The cen­tral-south­ern Alentejo region is home to the high­est num­ber of high-den­sity plan­ta­tions. Low-den­sity groves are more com­mon in the south­ern Algarve region or the cen­tral-north­ern Entre Douro-e-Minho region.

Juan Vilar Strategic Consulting’s data show that 64 per­cent of Portugal is cov­ered in mod­ern olive groves, of which slightly more than 32 per­cent are high-den­sity and slightly less than 32 per­cent are super-high-den­sity. Additionally, more than 38 per­cent of groves are irri­gated.

Since the first mod­ern grove was planted in the Santarém region in the last 20 years, heavy invest­ments and pub­lic incen­tives have dras­ti­cally changed the coun­try’s olive grow­ing sec­tor, which relied on tra­di­tional groves.

“Portugal used to be a coun­try with a high deficit in the pro­duc­tion of olive oil, hav­ing to import a huge amount of olive oil to sat­isfy its needs,” Matos said. ​“This whole sit­u­a­tion changed in a few years, and Portugal is now a self-suf­fi­cient coun­try… and a net exporter.”

“The sec­tor’s trade bal­ance went from being extremely defi­cient to a pos­i­tive bal­ance of around €250 mil­lion, while the qual­ity of olive oil pro­duced in Portugal increased sig­nif­i­cantly,” she added.

Portugal became self-suf­fi­cient in olive oil pro­duc­tion in 2014 and pro­duces 150 per­cent of its needs, which, accord­ing to Olivum, makes Portugal the world’s fourth-largest exporter.

“The increase in terms of area, but also of pro­duc­tiv­ity, is linked to the mod­ern olive grove and, above all, to the large irri­ga­tion project in Alqueva,” Almeida Simões said.

“Thus, 60 per­cent of the Alqueva irri­ga­tion perime­ter is mod­ern olive groves and the increases in the quan­ti­ties pro­duced are directly related to the suc­cess and pro­duc­tiv­ity of this type of olive grove,” he added. ​“In 2000, the national aver­age of olive pro­duc­tion was 0.5 tons per hectare. Today, some farms in the Alqueva region are pro­duc­ing 20 tons per hectare.”

While a few Portuguese com­pa­nies are among the largest olive oil pro­duc­ers glob­ally, an increas­ing num­ber of small pro­duc­ers also are demon­strat­ing the qual­ity of their extra vir­gin olive oils.

At the 2021 NYIOOC World Olive Oil Competition, 38 Portuguese olive oils were awarded for their excel­lent qual­ity. Among the win­ning pro­duc­ers, many grow tra­di­tional olive groves.

“They play a very impor­tant role in the national scene, as they pro­duce high-qual­ity bot­tled olive oil,” Almeida Simões said. ​“Olives are a rain­fed crop that is found mainly in the regions of Trás-os-Montes, Beira Alta and Beira Baixa.”

He added that tra­di­tional and mod­ern groves have a sig­nif­i­cant eco­nomic impact on Portugal and a social impact on rural inland com­mu­ni­ties.

“The agri-food sec­tor, namely the olive oil sec­tor, has made it pos­si­ble to boost the local econ­omy and cre­ate jobs in regions that are unin­ter­est­ing for other sec­tors of the econ­omy, as they are far from large urban cen­ters,” Almeida Simões said.

Local experts also value tra­di­tional olive groves for their role in main­tain­ing bio­di­ver­sity and pro­tect­ing genetic diver­sity.

According to Matos, their genetic pro­file and the role they play in land­scape and ecosys­tem main­te­nance is such that ​“this type of olive grove, which is less prof­itable by nature, must be specif­i­cally sup­ported so that its sur­vival can be guar­an­teed.”

While pro­duc­tion in Portugal con­tin­ues to rise dra­mat­i­cally, aver­age annual olive oil con­sump­tion is esti­mated at 7.8 liters per per­son, plac­ing the coun­try behind Italy, Spain and Greece.

Although, Portuguese experts noted how olive oil con­sump­tion in major pro­duc­ing coun­tries has dropped in recent years.

“This should be a wake-up call for the entire sec­tor,” Matos said. ​“There are many myths and a lot of mis­in­for­ma­tion, and the sec­tor is respon­si­ble for pro­mot­ing olive oils and edu­cat­ing con­sumers.”

“We need to have more stud­ies on the rea­son for this drop in con­sump­tion in pro­duc­ing coun­tries so that we can design well-tar­geted mar­ket­ing cam­paigns,” she added.

“The International Olive Council is con­duct­ing in-depth stud­ies on con­sumer behav­ior in sev­eral coun­tries, and I believe that the results of these stud­ies will be an essen­tial tool to under­stand the phe­nom­e­non, pro­mote the con­sump­tion of olive oil and cap­ture the atten­tion of younger con­sumers,” Matos con­tin­ued.

According to Almeida Simões, pro­duc­ing coun­tries should con­tinue to pro­mote their olive oil cul­tures but should not be lim­ited by this.

“A sig­nif­i­cant invest­ment has to be made in the con­sumer mar­kets of non-pro­duc­ing coun­tries that already con­sume olive oil,” he said, ​“and, above all, in non-pro­duc­ing coun­tries that do not have a tra­di­tion of con­sum­ing olive oil, as is the case of Asian coun­tries, where soy dom­i­nates the cui­sine.”

Among the most rel­e­vant chal­lenges the sec­tor faces, experts empha­size the role of cli­mate change and, more specif­i­cally, the severe and last­ing drought that is affect­ing the coun­try.

“The neg­a­tive effects of the severe and extreme mete­o­ro­log­i­cal drought can already be observed, which, at the end of January, affected 45 per­cent of the main­land,” the INE wrote. ​“This drought sce­nario, together with the rise in the prices of means of pro­duc­tion, has gen­er­ated uncer­tainty and grow­ing con­cern in the sec­tor.”

“This year, the drought is reach­ing pro­por­tions that are already very wor­ry­ing, and that could reach cat­a­strophic dimen­sions in the com­ing weeks,” Almeida Simões added.

“Rainfed crops are suf­fer­ing, and irri­gated crops are apply­ing the min­i­mum so that the plant does not suf­fer from water stress, which could affect the veg­e­ta­tive cycle not only this year, but in the years to come,” he con­cluded.

• National Institute of Statistics
• Juan Vilar Strategic Consultants