Italian Olive Oil Production Estimated to Be Down by As Much As Half, Prices Largely Unaffected

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Last year Italy pro­duced 470,000 tons of olive oil, dou­bling the hor­ren­dous 2015 out­put of 220,000 tons, to again become the world’s sec­ond-largest pro­ducer after Spain. Not only was the 2015 yield more than sat­is­fy­ing, the qual­ity was great too, thanks to per­fect cli­matic con­di­tions.

This year, good flow­er­ing made most pro­duc­ers opti­mistic at first that the pos­i­tive trend would con­tinue, but a series of unfa­vor­able weather-related fac­tors over the last period made things worse and, under these con­di­tions, it is now esti­mated that pro­duc­tion will not exceed 250,000 tons.
See Also:Complete Coverage of the 2016 Olive Harvest
Some farm­ers started har­vest in mid-September to deal with the crit­i­cal sit­u­a­tion and pre­vent loss, since the olive fruit fly and other pathogens had already affected olive groves in many pro­duc­tion areas.

The next few weeks will be cru­cial for those who are wait­ing for the right moment to start.

These chal­lenges are partly due to the fact that there was vir­tu­ally no win­ter through­out Italy, espe­cially in areas of the cen­ter and south.

Higher-than-aver­age tem­per­a­tures and humid­ity helped pathogens to develop, even in peri­ods when bio­log­i­cal devel­op­ment would be nor­mally sus­pended. Despite other spo­radic adverse weather con­di­tions like hail, there was great con­fi­dence among the most of pro­duc­ers until the period of fruit set, when they had to face sec­ondary pests like Anthracnose, and onset of Lytta Vescicatoria (or Spanish fly). Moreover, Anthracnose became a major prob­lem when olive fly, dur­ing egg-lay­ing spread fungi to fruits.

Some areas have suf­fered severe drought while in other regions heavy rains caused humid­ity and tem­per­a­tures below 30°C (86°F), which are ideal con­di­tions for the devel­op­ment of fly that in some cases left up to 10 tracks on one olive, as reported by some farm­ers.

For those who had to face these chal­lenges, treat­ment had lit­tle affect, espe­cially in bio­dy­namic and organic agri­cul­ture. In the case of con­ven­tional treat­ments and the use of prod­ucts with pre-har­vest inter­val of 28 – 30 days, the effi­cacy decreased when it rained.

In par­tic­u­lar, organic farm­ers started har­vest­ing early in order to pre­vent fur­ther attacks of the fly, but all pro­duc­ers of the ​‘Boot’ stand at atten­tion, even those who have had no prob­lems so far due to the posi­tion of their olive groves or to the prompt­ness and effec­tive­ness in apply­ing treat­ments.

Early and con­stant mon­i­tor­ing is essen­tial. Farmers who started to super­vise their plants from the begin­ning of spring, watch­ing for the occur­rence of sec­ondary dis­eases and apply­ing right treat­ments in time, are able to have bet­ter results.

According to a study con­ducted by GEA Iberia in July, the fore­cast indi­cated a decrease of 8 per­cent in world pro­duc­tion of olive oil for 2016 and it is esti­mated that all Europe will suf­fer a drop in pro­duc­tion.

In the same way as Italy, in Spain good expec­ta­tions have been sub­verted because of the heat and sum­mer drought with pro­duc­tion now esti­mated about 1.3 mil­lion tons.

A slump is also expected for Greece, while Portugal should reach an aver­age pro­duc­tion.

Elsewhere in the Mediterranean basin, a drop in pro­duc­tion is expected in Tunisia yet Turkey seems to be the only place that will reg­is­ter an increase. Nevertheless, accord­ing to oper­a­tors in the sec­tor, prices will not sig­nif­i­cantly increase thanks to left­over stocks from last sea­son.

• Teatro Naturale