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Global olive oil pro­duc­tion will reach 2.854 mil­lion tons for the cur­rent crop year (September 2017 through August 2018), accord­ing to pre­lim­i­nary esti­mates from the International Olive Council — a 12 per­cent increase over the pre­vi­ous year’s 2.538 mil­lion-ton out­put.

The cur­rent sea­son looks mediocre when com­pared with the aver­age for the last five years (2.945 mil­lion tons) after heat waves and droughts affected some areas over the sum­mer, falling short of the 3 mil­lion-ton bench­mark reached in six years since 2004.

See Also: Complete Coverage of the 2017 Olive Harvest
This year, Spain is expected to weigh in with 1.150 mil­lion tons — 10 per­cent less than last year. Italy is expected to pro­duce 320,000 tons, rep­re­sent­ing a 75 per­cent increase over the poor results of the pre­vi­ous sea­son.

Greece is back with 300,000 tons expected this year, rebound­ing from last sea­son’s poor results blamed on fruit fly attacks and extended heat waves.

Portugal could set its all-time record if it achieves the 110,000 tons fore­casted thanks to exten­sive plant­i­ngs in the Alentejo region, the IOC noted.

Tunisia will more than dou­ble last year’s pro­duc­tion to reach 220,000 tons; Output from Turkey will be sta­ble at 180,000 tons; Morocco looks to be a lit­tle up this year with 120,000 tons, and Algeria weighs in with 80,000.

In the Southern Hemisphere, Argentina would set a record with 37,500 tons expected this sea­son.

On the other side, the IOC said the world will con­sume 2.889 mil­lion tons of olive oil this year — about the same as in 2003 when there were 1.2 bil­lion fewer peo­ple on the planet.

• IOC September 2017 newslet­ter