Tunisia Has a Plan to Boost Its Olive Oil Industry

Tunisia’s Ministry of Agriculture, Water Resources and Fisheries will announce a new strat­egy to pro­mote olive grow­ing and olive oil pro­duc­tion over the com­ing decade, accord­ing to Agence Tunis Afrique Presse (TAP), which obtained a copy of the plan.

The goal is for Tunisia to pro­duce 250,000 tons of extra vir­gin olive oil each year, export 200,000 tons of olive oil annu­ally and raise domes­tic con­sump­tion to 50,000 tons annu­ally by 2035.

According to data from the International Olive Council, Tunisia pro­duced an aver­age of 228,000 tons of olive oil each year over the past half-decade, includ­ing a record-high 440,000 tons in the 2019/20 crop year. 

IOC data also indi­cates that aver­age annual exports were 216,000 tons over that period, although exports reached a six-year low in the cur­rent crop year. Meanwhile, con­sump­tion has remained rel­a­tively low at an annual aver­age of 33,600 tons. 

According to TAP, the min­istry plans to improve pro­duc­tion by renew­ing 1,000 hectares of old olive groves each year, plant­ing new vari­eties and con­vert­ing 10,000 hectares of rain­fed groves to super-high-den­sity plan­ta­tions annu­ally. About 93 per­cent of Tunisia’s olive groves are rain­fed.

Amid a dis­ap­point­ing har­vest in 2020/21, Ajmi Larbi, the head sci­en­tist at the country’s Olive Institute, said the lack of irri­ga­tion and poor farm­ing prac­tices were inhibit­ing pro­duc­ers from con­sis­tently achiev­ing higher yields. 

He added that bet­ter prun­ing prac­tices and other agro­nomic tech­niques would vastly improve yields and min­i­mize the sig­nif­i­cant gap between ​‘on-years’ and ​‘off-years’ in the North African coun­try.

The ministry’s strat­egy also includes restruc­tur­ing how the sec­tor is gov­erned, invest­ing in mills to improve qual­ity, more funds to improve sci­en­tific research pro­grams and part­ner­ships with the pri­vate sec­tor to develop an ana­lyt­i­cal data­base.

According to Tunisia’s National Olive Oil Office (ONH), invest­ing in qual­ity is the best way to improve the eco­nomic sit­u­a­tion of grow­ers and make the sec­tor sus­tain­able in the long run.

The orga­ni­za­tion believes this focus on qual­ity will facil­i­tate the increased export of indi­vid­u­ally pack­aged olive oil exports, which are far more prof­itable for pro­duc­ers than the tra­di­tional bulk exports with which the coun­try is asso­ci­ated.

In its strat­egy, the min­istry also plans to expand Tunisian olive oil exports. About 95 per­cent of all Tunisian olive oil exports are des­tined for Europe and the United States. However, the min­istry is now look­ing east to develop closer ties with Japan, China, India and African coun­tries. 

Ongoing efforts from offi­cials, the gov­ern­ment and pro­duc­ers have already started to bear fruit. Last month, Tunisian trade offi­cials announced that the coun­try would increase its exports to South Korea, which is the world’s twelfth-largest olive oil importer.

According to Tunisia’s National Observatory of Agriculture (Onagri), the coun­try is also well-poised to tap into the grow­ing organic olive oil mar­ket, with the amount of organic exports ris­ing to roughly half of the country’s annual pro­duc­tion totals.

Notably absent from the strat­egy is how Tunisian grow­ers will con­tend with the impacts of cli­mate change in the increas­ingly hot, dry and wild­fire-prone coun­try. 

A report pub­lished by Onagri esti­mated that olive oil pro­duc­tion could fall to an aver­age of 61,000 tons annu­ally, cit­ing warmer win­ters pre­vent­ing trees from receiv­ing nec­es­sary chill hours, higher spring­time tem­per­a­tures inter­fer­ing with blos­som­ing and longer peri­ods of drought. 

• TAP