Last updates from my beautiful olive grove in Southern Italy

Some pictures I took last week of the new "very good" harvest.
Check more on my Twitter or Olea Mediterranea Facebook page

Soon I will give you more details about this harvest.

Olive Oil production estimate in Europe

 The output of olive oil production for the following season in Europe is not expected to be one of the best of last years.

This forecast is largely due to the bad harvest expected in the top producer country, Spain.

Spanish olive oil production is expected to fall to approximately 900.000 tons from 1.900.000 tons of last record-breaking harvest.

Dryness could be considered the main cause of this bad result that will affect more on the scarcity of olive oil currently available in world market and will push the prices high, higher than current price of extra-virgin in Jaén sold for 2,55€ per kilo.

The situation in Italy, second world producer of olive oil, is not better than Spanish one. The extreme weather conditions during last summer and early autumn, with heavy rainfalls in August and September and unusual hot temperatures during October damaged the crops. These conditions determined a high humidity rate that helped the spread of the olive oil fly inducing a quantitative and qualitative decrease of the production, especially  in regions with a huge production like Puglia and Calabria. Second place in world ranking this year is threated by another Southern European country: Greece.

Olive trees seen by Van Gogh

The Hellenic nation is the only player in Europe that is forecast to sharply increase its olive oil production.  After a negative season last year, with about 100,000 tons of output, the expected production for 2014-2015 harvest is of about 270,000.  Peloponnese might have a very good performance in coming season and Crete also is expected to have a good production.

Other countries, like Portugal and Croatia, will have a little drop.

The price of olive oil is currently touching the peak of last years. A kilo of oil is sold between 2,55€ of Jaén and the average Italian price of about 4,10 €. 

Sources

www.bloomberg.com

www.dailymail.co.uk

www.lastampa.it

www.agi.it

www.olioofficina.it

www.internationaloliveoil.org

Positive forecast for olive oil production in North Africa

The now starting harvest in North Africa is expected to be a good one, as the annual growth is projected to increase  67 percent in 2014-2015 harvest. This outstanding figure is greatly due to the extraordinary production of olive oil of Tunisia that will touch a year over year growth rate of 250% or maybe more. Last year unfavorable weather conditions, especially the almost complete dryness, hit hardly the sector in the biggest producing country of olive oil of North African area. One could easily esteem  last year harvest a real tragedy, considering  that Tunisian soil hosts 80 millions of trees over an 1,8 hectars area and the great number of persons depending from olive sector revenues. The high price of extra virgin olive oil, sold for about 3€ in bulk in Sfax, probably will boost Tunisian production to a never reached level, between 265.000 and 285.000 tons, as recently declared mr Lassaad Lachaal, Minister of Agriculture. The Algerian production is expected to increase from the 49.000 tons of last season to 70.000 tons, despite great part of Kabilia, the Algerian region most knwon for its olive oil production, has been  frequently hit by fires last summer.
The only country in the area that will produce less olive oil than last year is Morocco. This decrease is expected to touch -25%, dropping from 120.000 tons of last harvest to 90.000 tons of olive oil.
No data available for Libya, where the war between clans and militias doesn't allow any forecast.

Sources

العربي الجديد

http://news80.com/dz/2014/10/09/300244/

www.yabladi.com