`Crisis Spawns Investments in Olive Groves - Olive Oil Times

Crisis Spawns Investments in Olive Groves

By Costas Vasilopoulos
Oct. 1, 2012 12:34 UTC

The deep reces­sion of the Greek econ­omy has made many young and edu­cated urban­ites turn to the good old fam­ily land and become new and ambi­tious farm­ers.

Among their pre­ferred prod­ucts are some exotic ones, like whortle­ber­ries and black­ber­ries, pome­gran­ates, ste­via, aloe and black truf­fle, but more than half of them pre­fer olive tree cul­ti­va­tion. Olive trees have always had a spe­cial place in Greek agri­cul­ture and are inex­tri­ca­bly linked with the country’s tra­di­tions.

What is more, olive groves are now con­sid­ered to be a good invest­ment. Potential investors are seek­ing olive groves of 8 acres and more, and are will­ing to pay up to 300 euros per olive tree for a well-placed and irri­gated grove.

Their inten­tion is to secure their money, since land never loses its value” as the con­ven­tional wis­dom in Greece has it, and receive at the same time an extra income from the oil and edi­ble olives (not to men­tion a sup­ply of EVOO for per­sonal use, which all Greeks need).


Newborn farm­ers, land investors and new entre­pre­neurs engaged in the branded olive oil sec­tor, all com­prise a most promis­ing task force of olive oil lovers, that can take Greek olive oil to the next level and exploit its mer­its.

But that’s not all; accord­ing to the European Network for Rural Development, the ranks of young farm­ers through­out Europe have been dimin­ish­ing, threat­en­ing the via­bil­ity of rural regions. Recent devel­op­ments may be the spark to reverse things and ignite an unpar­al­leled return to land, espe­cially in the coun­tries of Southern Europe which have tight bonds with agri­cul­ture and suf­fer the most from the lurk­ing finan­cial cri­sis.



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