Emigration, Infrastructure Hamper Albanian Agriculture

Summary

Albanian olive grow­ers are fac­ing chal­lenges due to emi­gra­tion and a lack of infra­struc­ture, result­ing in an aging work­force and dif­fi­cul­ties in har­vest­ing. Despite efforts to mod­ern­ize the sec­tor, includ­ing improv­ing qual­ity and pack­ag­ing, exports have not kept pace with pro­duc­tion increases, with Albania export­ing 60 per­cent less olive oil in the first nine months of 2024 com­pared to the same period in 2023.

Albanian olive grow­ers are strug­gling due to emi­gra­tion and inad­e­quate infra­struc­ture.

The mass depar­ture of young Albanians in search of bet­ter oppor­tu­ni­ties has resulted in an aging work­force in the agri­cul­tural sec­tor.

This labor short­age is par­tic­u­larly detri­men­tal to olive farm­ing. Due to Albania’s his­tor­i­cally frag­mented land own­er­ship and the steep ter­rain in the country’s olive-grow­ing region, plant­ing, prun­ing and har­vest­ing are usu­ally done man­u­ally.

Albania is home to around 12 mil­lion olive trees, pri­mar­ily along the coast and in the inland region of Berat, where olives and other fruits are vital to the local econ­omy.

According to demo­graphic data from the cen­sus, Albania’s pop­u­la­tion fell from 2.8 mil­lion in 2011 to 2.4 mil­lion in 2023, with rural areas most affected.

“There are no more young­sters here; they’ve all gone already,” Ysteak Molitaj, an olive farmer from Molishte, told Balkan Insight.

Molitaj called his son, who lives in Greece, to come home and help with the har­vest, but many other farm­ers can­not har­vest all of their trees.

Meno Besimaj of the Agricultural Technology Transfer Center in Vlorë said the rural exo­dus has increased farm­ers’ pro­duc­tion costs. As a result, olive oil prices at ori­gin have risen from $5 to $6 (€4.6 to €5.5) per liter in 2023 to $8 to $10 (€7.7 to €9.6) in 2024.

“The labor short­age means that the value of a work­ing day has also increased,” Besimaj told a con­fer­ence of olive farm­ers and millers.

“About 30 per­cent of the cost of olive pro­duc­tion is made up of har­vest­ing alone,” he added, ​“even though olive har­vest­ing is becom­ing mech­a­nized as there are now many bat­tery-pow­ered and elec­tric or diesel and gaso­line-pow­ered olive shak­ers.”

Among the rea­sons for the rural exo­dus is the poor infra­struc­ture in the coun­try­side.

While some investors in the Albanian olive sec­tor, includ­ing Andrew Strong from The Illyrian Press, insist that infra­struc­ture has improved over the past 20 years, local farm­ers believe that much more work is needed.

Many rural unpaved roads are in poor con­di­tion, mak­ing it more chal­leng­ing to hire labor­ers for the har­vest, pur­chase nec­es­sary inputs such as bot­tles, and trans­port bot­tled olive oil to mar­kets and dis­trib­u­tors.

“We have to use mules, like the Middle Ages,” Molitaj said. ​“Otherwise, we can pay for an all-ter­rain vehi­cle to take the olives to the mill, but that is costly.”

According to the World Bank, 49 per­cent of rural pro­duc­ers iden­ti­fied inad­e­quate trans­porta­tion, par­tic­u­larly the absence of all-weather roads, as their most sig­nif­i­cant chal­lenge.

Additionally, the lack of mod­ern stor­age facil­i­ties results in spoilage and waste. While recent gov­ern­ment invest­ments in mod­ern mills have helped move the dial, there is some con­cern that ade­quate train­ing pro­grams have not accom­pa­nied these.

Adhurim Lazaj, an olive oil spe­cial­ist, said Albanian farm­ers must improve qual­ity and focus on indi­vid­u­ally pack­aged instead of tra­di­tional bulk exports.

“To get max­i­mum qual­ity, we must har­vest on time,” he told the same con­fer­ence. ​“If we keep the quan­ti­ties of har­vested olives for days, decom­po­si­tion begins, and this is where the oil starts to spoil.”

Efforts to mod­ern­ize the country’s olive oil sec­tor are part of a national strate­gic plan to increase olive cul­ti­va­tion and expand exports.

According to International Olive Council data, Albania is fore­casted to pro­duce a record-high 30,000 met­ric tons in the 2024/25 crop year.

“This year, over 120,000 tons of olives are expected, which means that the con­verted ones will increase oil pro­duc­tion, even though the oil yield is not as high as last year due to the tem­per­a­ture fluc­tu­a­tions and the stress the olive trees expe­ri­enced due to the drought,” Besimaj said.

“Production capac­ity this year is good, and all fac­to­ries are at full capac­ity,” he added.

Mivan Peci, a con­sul­tant, told Olive Oil Times in a 2024 inter­view that Albania pro­duced an annual aver­age of 20,670 tons of olive oil between 2021/22 and 2023/24. Before 2020/21, annual pro­duc­tion hov­ered between 10,000 and 13,000 tons.

Despite pro­duc­tion fol­low­ing an upward trend, exports have not fol­lowed suit. According to cus­toms data reported by Gazeta Tema, Albania exported 2,400 tons of olive oil in the first nine months of 2024, a 60 per­cent decrease from the same period in 2023.

After poor har­vests across much of the Mediterranean basin, 2023 was a record year for Albanian olive oil exports.

Euronews Albania reported that olive oil exports reached €25 mil­lion in the first eight months of 2023, a 665 per­cent increase com­pared to the same period in 2022.

Despite global olive oil pro­duc­tion rebound­ing in the 2024/25 crop year, pro­duc­ers are still work­ing to export indi­vid­u­ally pack­aged olive oil.

“As we see, the olive oil mar­ket is advanc­ing abroad,” said Armando Lamaj, an olive oil pro­ducer in Vlorë. ​“The qual­ity of the oil was also very good this year. This year, I plan to get involved in the olive oil export mar­ket, and we will start the cer­ti­fi­ca­tion pro­ce­dures.”

• Balkan Insight
• Gazeta Tema
• EuroNews Albania