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Egypt plans to be the world’s top table olive pro­ducer by the end of the next decade, accord­ing to the coun­try’s Minister of Agriculture and Land Reclamation.

Ezz el-Din Abu Steit made that state­ment in Madrid last month after com­plet­ing bilat­eral meet­ings with his Spanish coun­ter­part, Luis Planas on the side­lines of the International Olive Council’s (IOC) annual meet­ing.

The two report­edly dis­cussed increas­ing coop­er­a­tion between Spain and Egypt in olive cul­ti­va­tion, as well as on other agri­cul­tural projects.

Egypt is cur­rently the world’s sec­ond largest pro­ducer of table olives after Spain. According to the most recent fig­ures made avail­able by the IOC, Egypt pro­duced 450,000 tons of table olives in the 2018/19 crop year. Spain pro­duced a world-record 613,000 tons.

While this was a record year for Spain, Egypt’s table olive yield dropped by about 100,000 tons, from their record high 2016/17 yield.

However, Egypt’s table olive pro­duc­tion con­tin­ues to trend upward. The aver­age of the past three har­vests, 500,000 tons, is higher than any pre­vi­ous year and this trend is likely to con­tinue.

Abu Steit said that Egypt plans to plant about 100 mil­lion new olive trees by 2020 in a bid to meet this goal. He has invited Planas to come and tour the country’s olive groves as well, hop­ing to excite the Spanish agri­cul­tural min­is­ter about the poten­tial for invest­ment.

“Abu Steit invited Planas to visit Egypt and get acquainted with its poten­tials to pro­mote the cul­ti­va­tion of olives,” a state­ment on the Egyptian Ministry of Agriculture and Land Reclamation’s offi­cial web­site said.

“For his part, the Spanish min­is­ter wel­comed the invi­ta­tion and called for out­lin­ing a mem­o­ran­dum of under­stand­ing to boost coop­er­a­tion in the agri­cul­tural field.”

There has been no pub­lic men­tion about what might be agreed to in the mem­o­ran­dum of under­stand­ing.

While in Madrid, Abu Steit also met with Tunisia’s Agriculture Minister, Samir Taieb, in order to dis­cuss increas­ing coop­er­a­tion between the two coun­tries. During the 2018/19 crop year Tunisia pro­duced 25,000 tons of table olives.

“Abu Steit probed with [Taieb] means of fos­ter­ing coop­er­a­tion between the two coun­tries’ pri­vate sec­tors in olive oil pro­duc­tion, in addi­tion to exchang­ing expe­ri­ence in the research area,” the state­ment said.

Some of the research that two coun­tries will likely share is how to deal with the increas­ing strains caused by cli­mate change. According to pre­dic­tive mod­els from cli­mate sci­en­tists, North Africa will con­tinue to become hot­ter and drier over time, espe­cially if the Earth’s car­bon emis­sions are not cur­tailed in time.

The region’s deser­ti­fi­ca­tion will also likely be a topic of con­ver­sa­tion in April when Egypt hosts the next meet­ing of the IOC. The Egyptian gov­ern­ment has already begun invest­ing in new irri­ga­tion sys­tems for olive groves that are being planted in the country’s west­ern desert.

“Egypt has a plan to increase the pro­duc­tion and cul­ti­va­tion of olives in desert lands,” Abu Steit said before leav­ing Madrid.

The hope is that by grow­ing olive trees here, the Egyptian gov­ern­ment can stop the spread of deser­ti­fi­ca­tion in the Nile River Delta.

• Egyptian Ministry of Agriculture and Land Reclamation


• Egypt Today