Malta's 2024 Olive Yield Plummeted

Summary

Windy weather and lack of rain­fall in 2024 led to a sig­nif­i­cant reduc­tion in the olive har­vest in Malta, with the coun­try pro­duc­ing 37 met­ric tons of olive oil com­pared to the pre­vi­ous year’s 121 tons. Despite chal­lenges, Maltese olive grow­ers like Ramla Valley imple­mented strate­gies such as drip irri­ga­tion and soil man­age­ment to pro­tect their crops and pro­duce high-qual­ity olive oil.

Windy weather and a lack of rain­fall through­out 2024 left Maltese olive grow­ers fac­ing a dras­ti­cally reduced har­vest. 

According to par­tial data from the Olive Growers Cooperative, the small Mediterranean arch­i­pel­ago nation, home to about half a mil­lion peo­ple, pro­duced 37 met­ric tons of olive oil from 227 tons of olives in the 2024/25 crop year. 

The cur­rent har­vest came after the bumper crop in 2023/24, which yielded 121 tons of olive oil, and is 48 per­cent below the aver­age of the pre­vi­ous four har­vests.

Growers attrib­uted the reduced olive har­vest to strong winds, an unsea­sonal April heat­wave and insuf­fi­cient rain­fall. 

Jimmy Magro, pres­i­dent of the Olive Growers Cooperative, described the past sea­son as ​“ter­ri­ble.” The wind destroyed blos­soms, and the warm weather pre­vented trees from hiber­nat­ing, reduc­ing pro­duc­tiv­ity. 

“2024 was not only a very hot and very dry year; at the end of April, we also faced a series of spring storms that wiped out many of the blos­soms,” Kurt Mifsud, the chief exec­u­tive of Mediterranean Culinary Academy, con­firmed to the Michelin Guide. ​“Those pow­er­ful winds greatly dimin­ished the chances of pol­li­na­tion, which is essen­tial for fruit­ing.”

Ramla Valley, a fam­ily-run cot­tage indus­try pro­duc­ing extra vir­gin olive oil on Gozo, Malta’s sec­ond-largest island, is among the pro­duc­ers hit hard­est by the harsh con­di­tions. 

“Since we began cul­ti­vat­ing olive trees in 1997, we have never expe­ri­enced such a low fruit yield,” owner George Carl Camilleri told Olive Oil Times. ​“The pri­mary causes were a lack of rain, despite con­tin­ued irri­ga­tion, extreme tem­per­a­tures and other adverse weather con­di­tions.”

The trees ini­tially bloomed vig­or­ously, but unex­pected rain­fall dis­rupted pol­li­na­tion just as the flow­ers opened. Two addi­tional flow­er­ings fol­lowed, both met with severe envi­ron­men­tal chal­lenges. 

“The sec­ond bloom coin­cided with strong south­east­erly winds, turn­ing the skies yel­low­ish-orange for an extended period, while humid­ity lev­els soared to 98 per­cent, fur­ther hin­der­ing pol­li­na­tion,” Camilleri said. ​“The third flow­er­ing took place under intense heat, caus­ing many flow­ers to dry out com­pletely.”

As a result, indi­vid­ual trees bore olives in three dis­tinct stages, lead­ing to an over­all yield reduc­tion of nearly 80 per­cent.

Despite the dif­fi­cul­ties, Ramla Valley remained proac­tive. Continuous water­ing, apply­ing Kaolin clay to reduce heat stress and installing olive fruit fly traps helped pro­tect their remain­ing crop. 

“Excessive tem­per­a­tures kept olive flies from being a sig­nif­i­cant threat,” Camilleri said. ​“We also closely mon­i­tored other pests, such as the olive bark bee­tle and wood bor­ers, which thrive in dry con­di­tions, par­tic­u­larly in neigh­bor­ing fields that lacked irri­ga­tion access.”

“Soil man­age­ment also played a cru­cial role in mit­i­gat­ing dam­age,” he added. ​“By mow­ing grass and repur­pos­ing it as mulch, we pre­vented water evap­o­ra­tion while sus­tain­ing soil fauna and microor­gan­isms.” 

Camilleri said the har­vested olives yielded high-qual­ity extra vir­gin olive oil despite dra­mat­i­cally lower yields. 

“While the weather remains beyond our con­trol, our long­stand­ing invest­ment in drip irri­ga­tion sys­tems has been invalu­able,” he said. ​‘Though expenses were sub­stan­tial, we were well-pre­pared and avoided being caught off guard.”

On the main island of Malta, local olive farmer Immanuel Grima con­firmed that his endemic Bidini olive grove also suf­fered from a low har­vest.

“That’s obvi­ously dis­ap­point­ing for us and other small-scale pro­duc­ers, as well as for top-tier Maltese restau­rants that like to use our olive oil,” he said.

Indeed, Darren Mifsud, direc­tor of Diar il-Bniet, a restau­rant and green­gro­cer that pro­motes local prod­ucts, said he had to raise his olive oil prices from €12 per liter to €16 to €18 per liter.

However, most of Malta’s 1,000 met­ric tons of annual olive oil con­sump­tion comes from imports. After rebound har­vests in the rest of the region, food importers Alf Mizzi & Sons antic­i­pated lower prices for imported oils.

Despite very low pro­duc­tion com­pared to nearby Tunisia or Italy, Grima said he sees poten­tial to increase Bidini pro­duc­tion, sim­i­larly to how Albanian pro­duc­ers are work­ing to mar­ket the endemic Kalinjot vari­ety despite the chal­lenges faced by Maltese olive oil pro­duc­ers.

“The name ​‘Bidni’ refers to the val­ley around Bidnija, some two kilo­me­ters south of St Paul’s Bay,” Grima said. ​“This unique Maltese cul­ti­var has been present there since Roman times.”

“We could expand our acreage, but arable land is scarce in Malta and, due to the islands’ rapid eco­nomic expan­sion in recent years, its price has become exor­bi­tantly high, increas­ing five­fold in a short time,” he added. 

“We have observed that olive tree cul­ti­va­tion on small-scale farms in Malta has dou­bled in the last decade, which has enabled this revival to gain fur­ther momen­tum,” Grima con­cluded. ​“Demand for Bidni olive trees is also on the rise.”

• Times of Malta
• Michelin Guide