Olives Bring Sustainable Development to Pakistan

For over a decade, Pakistan and Italy have worked to cre­ate a sus­tain­able olive oil sec­tor in Pakistan’s rural provinces.

In late November, rep­re­sen­ta­tives of both coun­tries met at the PakOlive National Gala in Islamabad to strengthen coop­er­a­tion.

“Italy and Pakistan have a very good his­tory and rela­tion­ship,” Muhammad Ramzan Anser, an agron­o­mist and the deputy project direc­tor at the Center of Excellence for Olive Research and Training (Cefort), told Olive Oil Times.

“There is a great trust bridge between the two sides,” he added. ​“In fact, Italy opened a trade office in Pakistan this November dur­ing the PakOlive National Festival.”

Anser describes the growth of Pakistan’s olive oil sec­tor as a ​“hope” for the coun­try. Given that Pakistan’s unem­ploy­ment rate is 8.5 per­cent, about 15.51 mil­lion peo­ple in 2023, the olive oil sec­tor promises to ben­e­fit many while boost­ing the coun­try’s econ­omy.

“The rela­tion­ship is mutu­ally advan­ta­geous,” Muhammad Tariq, the national project direc­tor for Pakistan’s Promotion of Olive Cultivation, told Olive Oil Times. He noted that hun­dreds of thou­sands of olive trees have been planted in col­lab­o­ra­tion with Italy in a decade.

“Over 5.6 mil­lion plants have already been planted,” he said. ​“In Pakistan, there is large-scale cul­ti­va­tion of olive trees for olive oil. About 500,000 to 800,000 olive oil nurs­ery plants are planted every year.”

“Up to this point, eight per­cent of these plants are at the fruit­ing stage, while oth­ers are at medium matu­rity because they were planted at var­i­ous stages,” Tariq added.

As the sec­tor has grown, Pakistan has dou­bled its efforts to reduce its depen­dence on for­eign nurs­ery plants to become a sig­nif­i­cant inde­pen­dent player in the world of olive oil.

“Previously, these nurs­ery plants were imported, but all this has changed with the work of the Pakistani gov­ern­ment,” Tariq said. ​“Millions of home­grown nurs­ery plants have been planted so far, and these plants have been planted grad­u­ally in the var­i­ous provinces.”

“Pakistan now has exper­tise in nurs­ery man­age­ment, devel­op­ment and tech­niques and can suf­fi­ciently pro­vide dis­ease-free cer­ti­fied home­grown plants to meet the demand of farm­ers,” he added.

Anser believes these devel­op­ments and oth­ers mean Pakistan’s olive oil sec­tor is mov­ing on a sus­tain­able path. First, most olive trees are grow­ing in once-bar­ren areas.

“Pakistan’s now-thriv­ing olive groves were cul­ti­vated on land with zero eco­nomic activ­ity. He said that cul­ti­vat­ing olives on these mar­ginal lands has cre­ated busi­ness and job oppor­tu­ni­ties for the rural poor,” he said.

“It has def­i­nitely been a geo­log­i­cal mis­sion, which has occurred with­out replac­ing any crop in Pakistan,” Anser added. ​“Instead, we are con­vert­ing waste­lands into olive groves while max­i­miz­ing the poten­tial of agri­cul­ture in the coun­try. Moreover, poten­tially four mil­lion hectares of such land are avail­able for future cul­ti­va­tion.”

It has been proven that con­vert­ing hun­dreds of hectares of bar­ren land will not only ben­e­fit the landown­ers and farm­ers finan­cially, but it could also have a pos­i­tive impact on the wildlife and flora while slow­ing down the effects of cli­mate change.

“Olive groves have been declared one of the best weapons against cli­mate change,” Anser said. ​“Unlike other cli­mate change ini­tia­tives, plant­ing olive trees cre­ates a green ini­tia­tive and fos­ters a sus­tain­able busi­ness, where poor farm­ers can earn an income.”

The abil­ity of olive cul­ti­va­tion to alle­vi­ate rural poverty and mit­i­gate the impacts of cli­mate change also extends to the byprod­ucts of the olive oil pro­duc­tion process.

The olive oil indus­try pro­duces vast byprod­ucts, such as leaves, pomace residues and waste­water, from which ingre­di­ents can be extracted to make cos­met­ics, includ­ing soaps and creams, food, pack­ag­ing mate­ri­als and phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals.

Tariq said Pakistan ben­e­fits from these byprod­ucts and, as a result, is a pro­ducer of many olive oil-related fin­ished prod­ucts, sup­port­ing work­ers with diverse skills.

“This is the first com­mod­ity where we pro­vide assis­tance across the value chain from the nurs­ery to the fin­ished prod­ucts,” he said. ​“Of the 45,000 acres (18,000 hectares) already cul­ti­vated, an equiv­a­lent of about 110 tons [of olives were] har­vested last year, 40 to 50 tons of that amount went to value-added prod­ucts.”

A review arti­cle pub­lished in Comprehensive Reviews in Food Science and Food Safety noted, ​“olive oil byprod­ucts are regarded as inex­pen­sive and abun­dant raw mate­ri­als, rich in bioac­tive com­pounds with high and var­ied health-related activ­i­ties.”

These byprod­ucts fos­ter the sus­tain­abil­ity of the olive oil chain and pro­mote the cir­cu­lar econ­omy.

According to Tariq, ​“34 cold press units are used to extract and process up to 30 to 50 kilo­grams of olive oil per hour, avail­able within the pri­vate and pub­lic sec­tor.”

“They were bought from Italy by the gov­ern­ment,” he added. ​“Non-gov­ern­men­tal orga­ni­za­tions and pri­vate farm­ers also pur­chased a few. As a result, there is a lot of scope for value-added prod­ucts like soap-mak­ing and pro­duc­tion of mois­tur­iz­ing creams that are now pro­duced in rural areas.”

Despite the huge leaps for­ward, chal­lenges exist. ​“There are not enough cer­ti­fied tech­ni­cians to run cus­tom machines and spare parts since these machines are from Italy,” Tariq said.

“The sec­ond chal­lenge is that we have to dis­cuss how to main­tain the qual­ity of the olive oil from the land to the mills and con­stantly teach and train farm­ers to main­tain the high­est qual­ity stan­dards,” he added.

Another issue, accord­ing to Tariq, is the cost of pro­duc­ing domes­ti­cally. ​“There’s no pro­cess­ing of col­ored bot­tles in Pakistan. As such, these olive oil bot­tles have to be imported from China and else­where. And this adds the costs of the olive oil.”

This issue is con­firmed by Anser, who noted that although there is already local demand for the olive oil pro­duced, it costs from $10 to $15 (€9 to €13.50) per liter, which only a seg­ment of the mar­ket can afford.

Most Pakistani homes tra­di­tion­ally cook by deep fry­ing. As a result, ​“the gov­ern­ment is work­ing side by side to improve the cheaper canola oil,” Anser said.

“The ulti­mate goal is exports,” he added. ​“We aim to export about 80 to 90 per­cent of olive oil. However, we con­tinue to see that a seg­ment of the soci­ety is increas­ingly aware of the med­i­c­i­nal and health ben­e­fits of olive oil and are more health con­scious.”

“There is a grow­ing accep­tance of olive oil locally, and this year, the local brand, PakOlive, was launched at the gov­ern­ment level,” Anser con­tin­ued. ​“There’s a small quan­tity avail­able on the shelf, but mostly olive oil can be found online. Consumers can also visit these cold press units to buy vir­gin olive oil directly.”

Tariq added that while Pakistanis har­vest and mill the olives, much of the tech­ni­cal exper­tise comes from Italians.

“Recently, Italy and Pakistan estab­lished the OliveCulture ini­tia­tive,” he said. ​“This project pro­vides farm­ers with prun­ing skills and other kinds of tech­niques, which are offered by vis­it­ing Italian experts.”

“There is def­i­nitely poten­tial to export high-qual­ity olive oil to Italy,” Tariq added. ​“Currently, Pakistan and Italy enjoy annual trade of €2 bil­lion.”

• Tribune