Persistent Climate and Pest Pressures Undermine Greece’s Olive Oil Recovery

Summary

The upcom­ing olive oil sea­son in Greece is expected to be dis­ap­point­ing for farm­ers and pro­duc­ers, with low yields pre­dicted due to fac­tors such as low fruit­ing, olive pests, and unfa­vor­able weather con­di­tions. Some regions, such as Messenia, Laconia, Lesbos, Crete, and Chalkidiki, are fac­ing chal­lenges with their olive oil har­vests, lead­ing to con­cerns about the impact on pro­duc­tion and prices in the indus­try. Despite the chal­lenges, some areas, like Crete, are still pro­duc­ing high-qual­ity olive oil with low acid­ity lev­els, pro­vid­ing some hope for the sea­son.

In Greece, the new olive oil sea­son is expected to be far from grat­i­fy­ing for the country’s olive farm­ers and olive oil pro­duc­ers.

Over the past two crop years, Greek pro­duc­ers have expe­ri­enced yields of olive oil that are weak to aver­age. A his­tor­i­cally low national yield of approx­i­mately 120,000 tons of olive oil in 2023/24 was fol­lowed by a rebound in pro­duc­tion, result­ing in a mod­er­ate yield of 250,000 tons of olive oil in 2024/25.

The country’s farm­ing sec­tor has not enjoyed an abun­dant olive oil crop since the 2022/23 sea­son, when more than 330,000 met­ric tons of olive oil were pro­duced domes­ti­cally.

This year, as the first work­ers have already entered the olive groves cur­ry­ing their rakes for the har­vest, some opti­mistic esti­mates put the country’s olive oil yield close to 250,000 met­ric tons, sim­i­lar to the pre­vi­ous har­vest.

According to some experts, how­ever, the amount of olive oil pro­duced nation­ally in Greece this year is unlikely to exceed 200,000 tons.

“I expect olive oil pro­duc­tion in the coun­try to drop by 50% to 60% this year,“ Nikos Koutsoukos, an expert olive oil taster and qual­ity con­sul­tant, told Olive Oil Times.

Koutsoukos, who trav­els across Greece through­out the year to mon­i­tor the progress of the olive trees, iden­ti­fied low fruit­ing and olive pests as the pri­mary causes of the low yield.

“The fruit­ing of the olive trees in many pro­duc­ing regions in the coun­try was not very suc­cess­ful due to the warmer than usual weather,“ he said. ​“In addi­tion, the olive fruit fly has made its pres­ence felt in sev­eral areas, threat­en­ing to increase the acid­ity and lower the qual­ity of the fresh olive oils.”

“For that rea­son, I urge pro­duc­ers to start har­vest­ing as soon as pos­si­ble to min­i­mize any dete­ri­o­ra­tion of the oils’ qual­ity from the pest,” Koutsoukos added.

In Messenia in south­ern Peloponnese, one of the country’s most boun­ti­ful olive oil-pro­duc­ing regions, the lack of rain and the man­i­fes­ta­tion of the fly mainly in the south­west of the region have bedev­iled the upcom­ing olive har­vest.

Local pro­duc­ers stated that the state was too late to ini­ti­ate the annual crop-dust­ing oper­a­tions against the fly, which allowed the pest to mul­ti­ply.

Even more, the few early October rains in much of the region are a mixed bless­ing. While they help the olive dru­pes increase in size, they also favor the man­i­fes­ta­tion of the gloeospo­rium, another sig­nif­i­cant pest of olives.

In neigh­bor­ing Laconia, an off-year har­vest is draw­ing on the region’s olive fields.

“We expect the olive oil crop in the whole region to be halved com­pared to last year,” pro­ducer and agri­cul­tur­ist Yiorgos Korrinis told us.

“This is chiefly due to the bien­nial pro­duc­tion cycle of the olive trees than any­thing else,” he added. ​“The olive fruit fly has caused no sig­nif­i­cant prob­lems this year. Not even half of the traps we had placed on olive trees are being returned to us with a fly trapped inside.”

As for prices for the season’s fresh extra vir­gin olive oil, Korrinis noted that the first trans­ac­tions show promis­ing signs.

“In some areas of the region the olive har­vest has already begun,” he said. ​“A few days ago, 25 tons of bulk extra vir­gin olive oil were sold for 7.85 euros per kilo­gram by a local asso­ci­a­tion, which is a sat­is­fac­tory price for the association’s pro­duc­ers.”

Korrinis noted, how­ever, that the fetched price was achieved in an auc­tion for an early-har­vested extra vir­gin olive oil of very low acid­ity. As the har­vest pro­gresses, prices at ori­gin are expected to fall to around €5.00 per kilo­gram of extra vir­gin olive oil.

On the Aegean island of Lesbos, a lower-than-antic­i­pated olive oil yield has prompted local pro­duc­ers to draw on the 4,000 tons of olive oil stock­piled from last year to meet buy­ing requests from whole­sale buy­ers.

However, Vassilis Kokkinoforos of the island’s pro­duc­ers asso­ci­a­tion has warned pro­duc­ers not to wait too long for prices to rise, as traders may turn to other mar­kets.

“[Farmers] will find them­selves trapped again, given that Spain has an esti­mated reduc­tion in pro­duc­tion, but will still have quan­ti­ties of oil this year,” Kokkinoforos said.

On Crete, the island’s olive oil sec­tor cel­e­brated the cer­ti­fi­ca­tion of the qual­ity of Cretan olive oil with a Protected Geographical Indication (PGI) label from the European Commission last month.

However, a fore­casted dis­mal har­vest on the island this crop year has dis­heart­ened local olive oil pro­duc­ers.

“The [olive oil] sea­son is expected to be destruc­tive for the island,” pro­ducer and regional coun­cilor of the dis­trict of Heraklion Priamos Ieronymakis told state ERT News chan­nel.

“Millions of olive trees are not bear­ing fruit at all due to the ongo­ing drought and other weather phe­nom­ena,” Ieronymakis added.

The olive fruit fly has also man­i­fested itself in the island’s olive groves, pos­ing another chal­lenge to local farm­ers.

Due to a lack of pes­ti­cides, the regional admin­is­tra­tion of Crete advised the island’s olive farm­ers to take action against the fly using their own resources instead of bank­ing on the state-run crop-dust­ing oper­a­tions.

Nevertheless, the impact of the pest is not uni­form across the island of Crete. According to Antonis Marakakis, an agron­o­mist and head of pro­duc­tion at Terra Creta in Kolymvari near Chania, the season’s first olive oils pro­duced in the area exhibit high-qual­ity char­ac­ter­is­tics with acid­ity lev­els stay­ing below 0.6.

“We are not going to wit­ness a new 2019 with the exces­sive acidi­ties we had back then,” Marakakis noted.

In Chalkidiki, north­ern Greece, local pro­duc­ers are also fac­ing an empty olive oil har­vest this year.

“This is an off year for the area for olive pro­duc­tion,” the pro­duc­tion super­vi­sor at the Rountos Mill in Gomati in the south­east of the penin­sula told us.

“Combined with the long-last­ing dry weather, we expect the quan­tity of olive oil pro­duced in our mill to drop to one third com­pared to last year.”

According to other pro­duc­ers on the penin­sula, Chalkidiki has entered a pro­longed period of low olive oil pro­duc­tion due to the pre­vail­ing adverse weather con­di­tions.

“We have not seen a sub­stan­tial olive oil yield in our area for four years due to the con­sis­tently warm­ing and dry weather,” said Manolis Averis, a pro­ducer and miller based in north­ern Chalkidiki.

“We are des­per­ate,“ Averis added. ​“This sum­mer, we had no rain for more than four months and the olives on the trees have almost com­pletely shriv­elled.”

“Chalkidiki’s olive oil indus­try, as in other pro­duc­ing regions in Greece, is reel­ing,” he con­cluded.

• Chaniotika Nea
• Nea Lesvou