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Springtime frosts in south­ern France cou­pled with drought across the south­west have made the 2021 olive har­vest dif­fi­cult to gauge.

The moun­tain­ous topog­ra­phy of south­ern France and its prox­im­ity to the Mediterranean Sea cre­ate many micro­cli­mates and lead to a stag­ger­ing olive har­vest. Two months into the cur­rent one, some val­leys have com­pleted the har­vest, while oth­ers will not fin­ish until January.

This makes esti­mat­ing the har­vest dif­fi­cult in the best of con­di­tions. However, this year pro­duc­tion esti­mates range from 3,000 tons to 5,000 tons. By com­par­i­son, France pro­duced about 4,500 tons of olive oil in the 2020/21 crop year, accord­ing to Laurent Bélorgey, the pres­i­dent of France Olive.

The European Commission esti­mates that France will pro­duce 4,605 tons in the cur­rent crop year, with 525 tons of olive oil pro­duced by mid-November, the lat­est date for which pro­duc­tion fig­ures were pub­lished.

However, Bélorgey, who is also an olive grower, thinks olive oil pro­duc­tion will be slightly higher, bring­ing this year’s yield closer to the ini­tial esti­mates for the 2020/21 crop year.

“The French har­vest should reach 5,000 tons this year thanks to oil yields exceed­ing expec­ta­tions with a rather aver­age ton­nage of olives,” he told Olive Oil Times. ​“The olives were very healthy this year despite a sum­mer rather favor­able to the olive fly with no great heat and rain.”

Nestled into the Alpilles moun­tains between Marseille and Montpellier, the pro­duc­ers at Château d’Estoublon expect to pro­duce less olive oil than pre­vi­ously antic­i­pated as a result of the spring­time frosts.

Anaïs Maillet, the company’s tech­ni­cal direc­tor, told Olive Oil Times ear­lier this month that the har­vest began in November and will end by mid-December.

“Right now, we have to face frost events, such as those we had in the spring, which were once very rare,” she said. ​“In these times, we are work­ing to face and over­come the dimin­ished avail­abil­ity of water for irri­ga­tion, which rep­re­sents a grow­ing chal­lenge here and else­where.”

According to François Aurouze, an agri­cul­tural expert at the con­sul­tancy Vignoble Conseil, drought in the country’s south­west had a far more severe impact on the har­vest than frost did, with pro­duc­tion decreases as high as 50 per­cent depend­ing on the loca­tion.

“Production is expected to be between 3,000 and 3,500 tons of oil, instead of 5,500 tons of oil for a good year,” he told Olive Oil Times. ​“That means a 25 to 30-per­cent decrease.”

“The prob­lem was to har­vest the olives at the right time because the matu­rity was het­ero­ge­neous due to the small har­vest vol­ume, with very lightly loaded trees and nor­mally loaded trees in the same plan­ta­tion,” Aurouze added.

Located just out­side of Nice, in the south­west cor­ner of France, Henri Derepas told Olive Oil Times that he expects to pro­duce 25-per­cent less olive oil this year than the pre­vi­ous decade’s aver­age.

The owner of Champsoleil said the har­vest started in mid-October this year, far ear­lier than usual and had wrapped up by the begin­ning of December.

“Many of our col­leagues, includ­ing pro­fes­sion­als, have had a white sea­son with­out any olives,” he said. ​“The [off-cycle in the alter­nate bear­ing nature of the olive tree] has once again been exac­er­bated. It is dif­fi­cult to explain every­thing other than a dis­turbed cli­mate with all its con­se­quences on the orchard.”

Still, Derepas is pleased with the qual­ity of the olive oil he has obtained and was still able to pro­duce plenty of other olive-derived prod­ucts, includ­ing tape­nade, olive pastes and table olives, from his 15-ton crop.

While cli­mate change is usu­ally at the top of the list of the farmer’s con­cerns, as Derepas rapidly approaches his retire­ment, a new con­cern has sup­planted it.

“The biggest chal­lenge will be to pass on our farm because we are retir­ing next year, and this is a very big prob­lem,” he said. ​“In France, many farms stop with­out effec­tive recov­ery.”

According to the France24 news agency, the num­ber of farm­ers in France decreases by two per­cent each year as old farm­ers retire with no one to replace them. The country’s age­ing work­force means about 15 per­cent of farm­ers will retire in the next five years, leav­ing many home­steads aban­doned.

“In our depart­ment, the olive grow­ing indus­try is par­tic­u­larly con­cerned,” Derepas said. ​“Even more, seri­ously, some mills are begin­ning to be con­cerned, but even if it is true that our coun­try is a minor player in the world of inter­na­tional olive grow­ing, it’s upset us very much.”

• France24