Harvest in Greece Runs Into Early Problems

The high hopes of Greek olive oil pro­duc­ers for a robust har­vest in the 2024/25 crop year
have been dashed by the pro­longed drought and the lack of sub­stan­tial autumn rain­falls in south­ern Greece.

The Peloponnese penin­sula, a hub of the country’s olive oil indus­try, has expe­ri­enced dry and hot­ter-than-usual weather through­out 2024.

As a result, olive har­vest­ing has been post­poned in cer­tain pro­duc­ing regions across the penin­sula, with farm­ers wait­ing for a shift to cooler and wet­ter weather in the hope of more olive oil accu­mu­la­tion.

The dry weather has sig­nif­i­cantly affected the olive trees, par­tic­u­larly in Messenia, in the south­ern Peloponnese, result­ing in low olive oil accu­mu­la­tion.

“In many cases, 100 per­cent of the pro­duc­tion is dam­aged in our area,” the agri­cul­tural asso­ci­a­tion of Chandrinos from west­ern Messenia said in an announce­ment. ​“And it gets worse as the drought and heat con­tinue.”

The asso­ci­a­tion also called on the Greek gov­ern­ment to com­pen­sate the afflicted olive farm­ers in the area.

More farm­ers and millers across Messenia, one of the country’s most boun­ti­ful olive oil-pro­duc­ing regions, face the reper­cus­sions of dry weather and high tem­per­a­tures this crop year.

“The har­vested olives crack irreg­u­larly when trans­ported for milling due to the high tem­per­a­tures in the area in the last six months,” olive farmer and mill owner Yiannis Panagopoulos from the town of Filiatra on the region’s west­ern coast told Olive Oil Times.

“So, the local farm­ers have ceased har­vest­ing until some cold weather sets in to bring the olives down to nor­mal tem­per­a­tures,” he added.

Some olive farm­ers in the region also reported that olive tree branches are sus­cep­ti­ble to crack­ing dur­ing har­vest due to the lack of sap in the trees.

In the neigh­bor­ing Laconia region, the har­vest has also been halted in some areas due to the min­i­mal oil quan­tity of olive yields.

The hot and dry weather has also impacted olive oil pro­duc­tion in Achaia in the west­ern Peloponnese.

“The olives are very thin and wrin­kled,” said local farmer Yiannis Bodiotis. ​“The har­vest is sched­uled to begin after November 15^th, and we are hop­ing for some rain until then. Production is down by 50 per­cent, but it is noth­ing like last year’s dis­as­trous crop.”

Across the Aegean Sea on the island of Lesbos, the third-largest island in the coun­try and another tra­di­tional Greek olive oil-pro­duc­ing region, har­vest and milling of the olives has also been tem­porar­ily sus­pended in some areas.

“We expected our olive oil crop to be six times larger than last year, sim­i­lar to the crops we had 20 years ago,“ farmer and miller Vasilios Kokkinoforos from the east­ern vil­lage of Moria told state-owned ERT chan­nel. ​“However, the lack of rain in the last few months in our area has largely impacted the quan­tity of the season’s olive oil.”

“Watering the olive trees is dif­fi­cult to apply in our area since the ter­rain on our island is semi-moun­tain­ous,” he added.

On Crete, the olive trees located in the east­ern part of the island are also sig­nif­i­cantly affected by the long-last­ing dry weather con­di­tions.

“It has been almost a year since the last rains fell in our area,” said Maria Sgourou, co-owner of the award-win­ning Skoutari Olive Oil from Sitia. ​“Our olive groves are irri­gated, but we still had to work twice as hard to get the qual­ity we were look­ing for in our olive oils this year.”

“However, most of the olive trees in our area are not irri­gated, and they have great dif­fi­cul­ties cop­ing with the pro­longed dry weather despite their nat­ural tol­er­ance to drought,” she added. ​“The sit­u­a­tion is bet­ter in our home­town in Kritsa, but it gets worse as we move towards the vil­lage of Kavoussi, where the trees are almost dev­as­tated.”

“Climate change has made its pres­ence felt more than ever now,” Sgourou noted. ​“This win­ter will be crit­i­cal; we need cold and rainy weather for our trees to sur­vive.”

According to the asso­ci­a­tion of Cretan Olive Municipalities (SEDIK), the sit­u­a­tion is bet­ter in the west­ern parts of the island near Chania, where some rain fell in September.

However, in cen­tral Crete, the local author­i­ties of Heraklion have announced that the season’s olive oil yield is expected to be lower than ini­tially expected due to the endur­ing drought.

Meanwhile, reduced olive tree fruition due to drought is not eli­gi­ble for com­pen­sa­tion from ELGA, the Greek orga­ni­za­tion of agri­cul­tural insur­ance. Olive farm­ers and olive oil pro­duc­ers from across the coun­try are ask­ing for an amend­ment in the organization’s reg­u­la­tions to include dam­age caused by drought.

• SEDIK
• Agro24
• The Best