Drought and Warm Winter Lead to Sharp Decline in Sicily's Harvest

Unlike most of main­land Italy, Sicily’s olive oil yields align with or are slightly below those of recent years. However, pro­duc­tion vol­umes have more than halved.

According to sev­eral grow­ers on the Mediterranean island, this drop can be attrib­uted to last winter’s unusu­ally mild tem­per­a­tures. At the same time, the per­sis­tent drought across the region con­tin­ues to pose a threat.

“The real­ity is that we’ve seen a dras­tic decline in pro­duc­tion, although it is at least off­set by the qual­ity of the extra vir­gin olive oil we’ve man­aged to pro­duce,” said Maria Grazia Spanò from Buccheri, in the south­east­ern cor­ner of the island, where she cul­ti­vates Tonda Iblea, Biancolilla and Moresca olives at Vernèra farm.

“This year, we began har­vest­ing in the last ten days of September, start­ing with a yield of nine per­cent, which increased to about 13 per­cent in the first ten days of October and reached 15 per­cent in the fol­low­ing days,” Spanò noted.

“However, after heavy rains start­ing on October 20^th, yields dropped to 13 per­cent,” she added. ​“Even so, this is an excel­lent result since we are gen­er­ally used to achiev­ing yields of only seven, eight or ten per­cent.”

Producers in west­ern Sicily, includ­ing Antonella Titone, who cul­ti­vates Cerasuola, Nocellara del Belice, Biancolilla, Coratina and Frantoio olives between Trapani and Marsala, reported sim­i­lar expe­ri­ences.

“The aver­age yield this year was 14.8 per­cent, tak­ing into account that cer­tain vari­eties like Biancolilla yielded around ten per­cent, while Cerasuola per­formed bet­ter,” she explained.

“At the time of har­vest, the olives were healthy and plump, thanks in part to emer­gency irri­ga­tion,” Titone added. ​“However, we faced a sharp decline in vol­umes due to the warm win­ter.”

She attrib­uted this to the lack of chill­ing units the trees received dur­ing win­ter.

“There was essen­tially no win­ter,” she said. ​“As a result, the olive trees didn’t enter their usual veg­e­ta­tive rest, and in spring, very few buds formed, lead­ing to sig­nif­i­cantly lower pro­duc­tion lev­els. This issue was wide­spread across the region.”

“Fortunately, higher-than-usual yields saved our sea­son, along with the high qual­ity of the prod­ucts we obtained,” Titone added.

Producers in the inland areas also expressed sim­i­lar con­cerns, espe­cially regard­ing the lack of rain­fall.

“Drought remains a major issue here, and even the heavy rains we’ve expe­ri­enced in recent weeks haven’t fully alle­vi­ated the dry­ness,” said Paolo Miceli, co-founder of Miceli & Sensat in Monreale, near Palermo, where he cul­ti­vates Nocellara del Belice, Biancolilla, Cerasuola, Arbequina and Picual olives.

“I believe this played a sig­nif­i­cant role in the 60 per­cent drop in pro­duc­tion we’ve recorded,” Miceli said. ​“We also observed lower yields, start­ing around ten per­cent early in the har­vest, which slightly increased to 11 per­cent as oper­a­tions pro­gressed.”

“On the bright side, the olive fruit fly was prac­ti­cally absent due to the pro­longed heat waves,” he added. ​“Despite all the chal­lenges, we’ve pro­duced extra vir­gin olive oils of excep­tion­ally high qual­ity.”

On the island’s south­west­ern coast, in Menfi, yields were higher for Carmen Bonfante, pro­ducer of the extra vir­gin olive oil brand Embrace in the province of Agrigento.

Unlike many oth­ers, she achieved good pro­duc­tion vol­umes from her Nocellara del Belice, Biancolla and Cerasuola trees.

“In terms of quan­tity, it was a good year for this area, result­ing in an excel­lent prod­uct,” Bonfante reported. ​“I attribute this suc­cess to our ded­i­ca­tion in the groves, where we imple­mented an irri­ga­tion sys­tem to coun­ter­act the drought.”

“Typically, my aver­age yield is around 12 per­cent, but this year,” she con­cluded. ​“I man­aged to reach an impres­sive 16 per­cent. This makes up for last year when yields were quite low.”