`France Pledges Aid for Olive Oil Sector - Olive Oil Times

France Pledges Aid for Olive Oil Sector

By Isabel Putinja
Mar. 2, 2015 16:29 UTC

French olive pro­duc­ers will soon be able to ben­e­fit from new finan­cial aid mea­sures pro­posed by the French Ministry of Agriculture.

The mea­sures have been pro­posed in response to the poor 2014 – 2015 har­vest which saw a decrease of more 60 per­cent in pro­duc­tion and a sig­nif­i­cant loss in prof­its for olive oil pro­duc­ers and mills.
See Also:Complete Coverage of the 2014 Olive Harvest
A press release by the Ministry pub­lished on February 25, 2015, referred to the most recent har­vest as the worst in recent years, the result of olive oil fly infes­ta­tions and bad weather. It announced the intro­duc­tion of a series of urgent mea­sures which will include social secu­rity pay­ment exemp­tions for olive pro­duc­ers, assis­tance with inter­est pay­ments, reim­burse­ment of prop­erty own­er­ship tax, and eli­gi­bil­ity for loans as part of a frame­work cov­er­ing assis­tance for the fruit and veg­etable sec­tor, in which olives have been included.

The agri­cul­ture min­is­ter Stéphane Le Foll, has also informed the min­istry of labor that appli­ca­tions by mill own­ers for unem­ploy­ment ben­e­fits due to the excep­tion­ally low crop yields should be processed as quickly as pos­si­ble.

The min­istry has also pledged to increase gov­ern­ment assis­tance to AFIDOL, the inter­pro­fes­sional asso­ci­a­tion for olive oil in France (Association Française Interprofessionnelle de l’Olive) for its tech­ni­cal sup­port and other activ­i­ties. It is also look­ing at quickly imple­ment­ing pro­grammes which will intro­duce mea­sures aim­ing to pre­vent, con­trol and elim­i­nate olive oil fly infes­ta­tions.


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