Italian Growers Face Disappointing Yields

In northern and central Italy, many producers are seeing below-average oil yields. In the south, yields are normal but there's far less fruit.

Marina Colonna blamed weather conditions to lower olive yields in the south-central region of Molise. (Photo: Marina Colonna)
By Paolo DeAndreis and Ylenia Granitto
Nov. 14, 2024 15:04 UTC
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Marina Colonna blamed weather conditions to lower olive yields in the south-central region of Molise. (Photo: Marina Colonna)

Italian grow­ers across the penin­sula are report­ing lower-than-expected olive oil pro­duc­tion vol­umes as the har­vest sea­son enters full swing.

In some cases, large vol­umes of olives do not deliver the usual yields, while in oth­ers, typ­i­cal yields come from fewer olives.

Producers in the north of the coun­try lament con­ver­sion yields well below aver­age.

Rainfall at the end of October delayed the har­vest and kept yields low… This will inevitably impact prices, and it won’t be easy to explain to cus­tomers.- Alessandro Melchiorri, owner, Melchiorri Olio

This year, I har­vested sig­nif­i­cantly more olives in our north­ern groves than in the south­ern ones,” said Pietro Polizzi, owner of Olio Enotre, which has groves in Veneto in the north and Calabria in the south.

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Olive oil production is likely to fall below initial expectation in Italy due to lower oil yields across much of the country. (Photo: Marina Colonna)

The olives were healthy, with no signs of olive fruit fly,” he added. However, the prob­lem lies in con­ver­sion yields, which were unusu­ally low – around seven to eight per­cent.” 

Conversion yields refer to the amount of olive oil extracted from 100 kilo­grams of olives. A seven per­cent yield means seven kilo­grams of olive oil are obtained from milling 100 kilo­grams of olives.

See Also:2024 Harvest Updates

These low con­ver­sion rates will inevitably affect the final prod­uct price. On the bright side, the qual­ity remains very high,” Polizzi said.

Ceil Friedman, the co-owner of Erminio Cordioli in the Verona area of Veneto, also lamented lower-than-expect yields from her har­vest.

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Ceil Friedman said rainfall interupted the harvest, which was also plagued by lower oil yields. (Photo: Erminio Cordioli)

The olives were beau­ti­ful, and we are delighted with the qual­ity of the oil,” she said. It was tough work, espe­cially with rain­fall fre­quently inter­rupt­ing the har­vest. Yet, we were caught off guard by the lower-than-expected yields.”

This issue is affect­ing all the pro­duc­ers in the area, I can assure you,” Friedman added. Varieties like the local Grignano usu­ally yield about ten per­cent, but this time, it reached six.”

Furio Battelini, the tech­ni­cal direc­tor at Agraria Riva del Garda, whose groves are sit­u­ated just above Lake Garda, also observed unex­pect­edly low yields.

We expe­ri­enced fairly abun­dant olive pro­duc­tion this year, as the con­di­tions since spring were favor­able,” he said. The olive fruit fly did not recover from the peak sum­mer heat in August so that it could­n’t cause dam­age.” 

Yet, we’ve seen very low yields at the mill, down to eight per­cent, whereas we typ­i­cally expect some­thing between 14 and 15 per­cent,” he added.

Battelini attrib­uted this phe­nom­e­non to the weather pat­terns since September when sunny days became rare. The lack of sun­light likely affected the ripen­ing of the olives, pre­vent­ing them from reach­ing full matu­rity,” he said.

According to Battelini, pro­duc­ers focused on qual­ity should still opt for an early har­vest in such con­di­tions, as wait­ing can decrease the oil’s phe­no­lic con­tent. 

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We also expe­ri­enced heavy rain­fall, which pre­ma­turely caused olives to fall from the trees,” he said. Those who did­n’t har­vest early likely lost a sig­nif­i­cant amount of fruit.” 

The low yields have damp­ened the typ­i­cally joy­ful har­vest sea­son for many,” Battelini added. The olive oil qual­ity remains excel­lent, with very ele­gant and clean pro­files. However, it’s a shame that we won’t be able to fill our stor­age tanks this year.”

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Oil yields in parts of northern Italy were 50 percent below average due to unusual climatic swings from the summer to the autumn. (Photo: Agraria Riva del Garda)

In cen­tral Italy, pro­duc­tion vol­umes are report­edly sat­is­fy­ing, but lower con­ver­sion yields are puz­zling grow­ers, as large, healthy olives retain a lot of water. Once pressed, oil yields are lower than antic­i­pated.

Producers in this region attribute this to the abun­dant and pro­longed rains in early autumn after a hot, dry sum­mer.

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Our early har­vest usu­ally results in lower yields, but this year, we’re down to half the usual,” said Marco Prosseda of DueNoveSei, a com­pany in Moricone in the heart of Lazio’s Roman Sabina.

After a favor­able sum­mer, per­sis­tent rains arrived in September and October, caus­ing the olives to swell with water,” he added. Ironically, despite an abun­dance of fruit, 30 per­cent more than last year, we’re pro­duc­ing nearly as much oil as last year but with sig­nif­i­cantly more olives.” 

Midway through the har­vest, clear trends have emerged, accord­ing to Prosseda. 

First, the groves are laden with beau­ti­ful, healthy olives; sec­ond, we’re pro­duc­ing high-qual­ity prod­ucts with great organolep­tic and nutraceu­ti­cal pro­files; third, from 100 kilo­grams of fruit, we’re extract­ing just nine liters of oil, a nine per­cent yield, when we usu­ally reach around 15 per­cent.”

A sim­i­lar sit­u­a­tion can be observed in Montelibretti, another Roman Sabina town where Antonio Mancini co-man­ages the Marcoaldi Roberta farm.

The har­vest is pro­gress­ing well, with many healthy olives on the trees,” Mancini said. We expect one of our best-qual­ity har­vests in recent years.”

However, heavy rains ten days ago hit the olives at their peak, caus­ing them to swell,” he added. After months of drought, their vol­umes dou­bled in just 12 to 24 hours, and their weight increased due to water absorp­tion.”

Further north in the region of Tuscia, Pietro Re, founder of Tamìa, cul­ti­vates sev­eral olive vari­eties that yielded a plen­ti­ful har­vest and opti­mal qual­ity, though with lower yields.

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Pietro Re said the olive harvest was bountiful in Lazio, but the oil yields were below average. (Photo: Tamìa)

Every olive oil sea­son has its own story, with new chal­lenges each year, and this one is no excep­tion,” Re said.

In Tuscany, Simone Botti of Le Fontacce in the Arezzo area attrib­utes the low yields to drought.

We began har­vest­ing Leccino, an early vari­ety, on October 16th, obtain­ing a six per­cent yield,” he said. Now, as we work on a blend of Moraiolo, Leccino and Frantoio, we’re achiev­ing yields of 8.5 to nine per­cent, com­pared to our pre­vi­ous aver­age of 13 per­cent.”

According to Botti, the fre­quent and severe sum­mer droughts have affected yields. He believes the dry sum­mer months affected fruit devel­op­ment, result­ing in a dis­pro­por­tion­ate ratio of pit to pulp, with more pit and less pulp.

Due to the dry sum­mer, oil accu­mu­la­tion didn’t occur at the right time,” he explained. When the rains finally arrived, they were too late.”

Massimo Ragno, panel leader and pur­chas­ing man­ager at Monini, noted that lower-than-expected yields across cen­tral Italy were due to sig­nif­i­cant rain­fall, fol­lowed by warm tem­per­a­tures, which slowed the dry­ing process and increased the water con­tent in olives.

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Monini expects lower yields across central Italy due to singificant rainfall followed by warm temperatures. (Photo: Monini)

Olive quan­ti­ties and qual­ity were excel­lent this year, with no fruit fly,” added Alessandro Melchiorri, owner of Melchiorri Olio in Spoleto, Umbria. However,rain­fall at the end of October delayed the har­vest and kept yields low, between eight and 11 per­cent. This will inevitably impact prices, and it won’t be easy to explain to cus­tomers.” 

Compared to last year, we’re see­ing sig­nif­i­cantly more olives, but given the low yields, it’s still hard to pre­dict the season’s over­all out­come,” he said.

Ragno empha­sized the impact of the intense rain­fall both before and dur­ing the har­vest. 

Olive oil forms between August and September. After that period, it’s mostly the water con­tent that changes,” he said. When it rains, olive trees can effi­ciently use the water, which leads to good yields.” 

However, if heavy rains come just before the har­vest, as was the case in sev­eral areas, this process is dis­rupted, and the water ends up sat­u­rat­ing the fruits,” Ragno added. In some cases, yields were lower because the olives con­tained way more water than usual.”

Central-north­ern pro­duc­tion, par­tic­u­larly in Tuscany and Lazio, is still pro­gress­ing well in terms of qual­ity and quan­tity,” he noted.

Comforting news also came from the cen­tral-south­ern region of Molise

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Marina Colonna blamed weather conditions to lower olive yields in the south-central region of Molise. (Photo: Marina Colonna)

The har­vest is pro­gress­ing smoothly, even though vol­umes are slightly lower com­pared to the best sea­sons, largely due to weather con­di­tions,” said Marina Colonna, owner of Colonna Farm.

The yields are aver­age, but the qual­ity is excel­lent,” she said. The olives have retained intense organolep­tic char­ac­ter­is­tics, pro­duc­ing olive oil with a rich, com­plex aro­matic pro­file. This year’s oils have more pro­nounced green notes and a per­sis­tent spici­ness.”

In the south­ern regions, where most of the country’s olive oil is tra­di­tion­ally pro­duced, grow­ers faced chal­lenges due to scorch­ing and dry con­di­tions through­out the sea­son. Moreover, this year is an off-year’ in the alter­nate bear­ing cycle of olive trees, result­ing in less fruit.

On- and off-years

Olive trees have a nat­ural cycle of alter­nat­ing high and low pro­duc­tion years, known as on-years” and off-years,” respec­tively. During an on-year, the olive trees bear a greater quan­tity of fruit, result­ing in increased olive oil pro­duc­tion. Conversely, an off-year” is char­ac­ter­ized by a reduced yield of olives due to the stress from the pre­vi­ous on year.” Olive oil pro­duc­ers often mon­i­tor these cycles to antic­i­pate and plan for vari­a­tions in pro­duc­tion.

In Puglia, the country’s most sig­nif­i­cant olive oil-pro­duc­ing region, con­ver­sion yields are between 12 and 16 per­cent. However, the reduced vol­ume of fruit is affect­ing over­all pro­duc­tion lev­els.

We esti­mate that Puglia will pro­duce less than half of its usual out­put,” Ragno said. The com­bi­na­tion of the alter­nate bear­ing cycle and adverse con­di­tions dur­ing flow­er­ing, along with a very dry sea­son, has severely impacted pro­duc­tion.”

Despite these chal­lenges, some qual­ity grow­ers have man­aged to adapt. 

Thanks to inten­sive agro­nomic prac­tices, we’ve achieved good results in terms of qual­ity and quan­tity,” said Emmanuel Sanarica, owner of Sanarica Farm.

The use of fore­cast­ing sys­tems and envi­ron­men­tal sen­sors has allowed us to main­tain pro­duc­tion lev­els con­sis­tent with pre­vi­ous years,” he added, under­scor­ing technology’s cru­cial role in adapt­ing to cli­mate unpre­dictabil­ity.

High tem­per­a­tures through­out the phe­no­log­i­cal stages were a major chal­lenge, even affect­ing the har­vest, which we started 30 days ear­lier than usual, sac­ri­fic­ing yields,” Sanarica explained. Nonetheless, we’ve man­aged to pro­duce highly aro­matic oils rich in polyphe­nols.”

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While oil yields hovered around the average in Puglia, the fruit yield was less than last year. (Photo: Sanarica Farm)

Growers encoun­tered sim­i­lar dif­fi­cul­ties in the south­ern region of Calabria, Italy’s sec­ond-largest olive oil-pro­duc­ing area.

In our region, we’re see­ing a sig­nif­i­cant drop in olive vol­umes, down to about ten per­cent of what we expected. Fortunately, the qual­ity remains opti­mal,” said Diego Fazio, the co-owner of Tre Olive.

The sil­ver lin­ing is that con­ver­sion yields are higher than last sea­son. This allows us to main­tain a very high stan­dard of qual­ity for our extra vir­gin olive oil, even if quan­ti­ties are lim­ited,” Fazio added.

Drought dur­ing the sum­mer forced us to imple­ment emer­gency irri­ga­tion, espe­cially for younger trees,” added Maria Cristina Di Giovanni, owner at Podere d’Ippolito.

Most pro­duc­ers in the plains of Lamezia Terme reported decent yields, though the num­ber of olives is sig­nif­i­cantly reduced.

Some of our farms suf­fered con­sid­er­able dam­age due to flood­ing and heavy rain­fall at the end of October, which severely tested the resilience of our grow­ers dur­ing the olive oil cam­paign,” Di Giovanni said.

Our grow­ers also had to man­age over­flow­ing streams and land­slides that obstructed access routes,” she added. We’re now wrap­ping up har­vest­ing and pro­cess­ing oper­a­tions to ensure that our cus­tomers con­tinue to receive the high­est qual­ity extra vir­gin olive oil.”


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