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Spain is expect­ing a table olive har­vest of 523,000 tons at most in the 2019/20 crop year, a 15-per­cent decrease com­pared with last year’s record high pro­duc­tion.

The Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture, Food and Fish­eries’ Inter­pro­fes­sional Table Olive Asso­ci­a­tion had orig­i­nally pre­dicted a yield of about 590,000 tons, but a very dry sum­mer fol­low­ing the unusu­ally cool spring forced them to revise down that pre­dic­tion.

The Inter­pro­fes­sional Asso­ci­a­tion added that the final yield could be even lower if poor cli­matic con­di­tions pre­vailed through­out the har­vest.

“Sub­se­quently, tem­per­a­tures have risen [since the spring] and are greatly exac­er­bat­ing the con­se­quences of the water deficit which has dragged on dur­ing the agri­cul­tural year for the groves,” the Inter­pro­fes­sional wrote in its report. ​“This fact is caus­ing a decrease of green fruits at the date of issuance of this report and greatly con­di­tions the final result dur­ing the har­vest­ing period.”

At 523,000 tons, this year’s yield would be the low­est since 2012 and 10 per­cent lower than the aver­age of the pre­vi­ous five har­vests.

In Andalu­sia, where nearly 80 per­cent of Spain’s table olives are grown and har­vested, one expert expects a ​“medium-low” crop this year.

The har­vest sea­son has arrived three weeks ear­lier than it did in 2018, accord­ing to Anto­nio Rodríguez, who con­ducted the first assess­ment of the autonomous com­mu­ni­ty’s table olive crop for COAG Andalu­sia.

He said that the same cli­matic con­di­tions that led to the sharp decrease in pro­duc­tion esti­mates had also caused the har­vest to begin ear­lier, and in all like­li­hood, last for a shorter period of time.

These weather con­di­tions caused many of the olive trees to have a low flow­er­ing rate and led sev­eral vari­eties of olives not to mature prop­erly.

“We have a medium-low crop in almost all vari­eties,” Rodríguez said in the report. The only vari­eties that appear to be on pace for a nor­mal har­vest are Cac­ereña and Car­rasqueña olives, which account for less than 10 per­cent of all Andalu­sian olive groves.

In spite of this year’s poor har­vest, Anto­nio de Mora, the sec­re­tary gen­eral of Asemesa, told Olive Oil Times that Spain’s lead­ing table olive pro­ducer orga­ni­za­tion, which is part of the Inter­pro­fes­sional Table Olive Asso­ci­a­tion, expects pro­duc­tion to con­tinue trend­ing upwards.

“Each har­vest is dif­fer­ent,” de Mora said. ​“Span­ish pro­duc­tion, as in the rest of the world, shows a sus­tained trend of growth for many years.”

How­ever, the upward trend of the pre­vi­ous half-decade will cer­tainly be inter­rupted this year. Pro­duc­ers and other mem­bers of the sec­tor will be wait­ing for the Inter­pro­fes­sional Table Olive Asso­ci­a­tion to pro­vide an update on the sta­tus of the har­vest on Sep­tem­ber 23.

Until then, the weather in Andalu­sia is expected to con­tinue being hot­ter and drier than nor­mal, which may fur­ther deplete the final pro­duc­tion total.

• COAG Andalu­sia