Olive Farmers in Pakistan Seek Government Assistance to Scale Production

Olive farm­ers in Pakistan value their fruits as a ​“cash crop” but expect more sup­port from the gov­ern­ment to help them scale up their olive oil pro­duc­tion to a com­mer­cial scale.

As part of its olive cul­ti­va­tion ini­tia­tive, Pakistan plans to plant 10 mil­lion olive trees across the coun­try to become self-suf­fi­cient in olive oil pro­duc­tion.

Basit Shakeel Hashmi, a pio­neer­ing olive farmer from the country’s largest agri­cul­tural province, Punjab, is bull­ish about the future of olives in the South Asian coun­try.

Six years ago, he switched from grow­ing wheat and maize, tra­di­tional crops in the region, to plant­ing olive trees.

He told Olive Oil Times that he decided to grow olives because he was earn­ing less from tra­di­tional crops due to the uneven ter­rain. He started grow­ing olives when the provin­cial gov­ern­ment of Punjab started its olive cul­ti­va­tion pro­gram.

In his home dis­trict of Chakwal, Hashmi planted 18,000 olive trees on 100 hectares of land, includ­ing bar­ren and uneven tracts. Now, 90 per­cent of his trees are bear­ing fruit, and Hashmi sells his extra vir­gin olive oil for €18 per liter at the local mar­ket.

“My land has become gold since I turned it to olive farms,” he said. ​“Just 5,000 olive trees lead to enough oil pro­duc­tion that helps a farmer earn more than €18,000 annu­ally, which is a hand­some amount for an agri­cul­tur­al­ist.”

Hashmi added that it was not an easy task for him due to uneven tracts in the land where he had to install a drip irri­ga­tion sys­tem fol­low­ing the advice of the government’s experts on olive cul­ti­va­tion.

Later on, he decided to try some­thing a bit dif­fer­ent and exca­vated the area to flat­ten the land and planted more olive trees.

Hashmi had grown the olive plants imported from Spain and pur­chased them with the help of gov­ern­ment sub­si­dies. Now he grows six vari­eties, among them Arbequina and Koroneiki.

Dozens of other farm­ers in the region are also fol­low­ing in his foot­steps and plant­ing olives.

Officials from the national pro­gram for the pro­mo­tion of olives and farm­ers are con­vinced that the pro­mo­tion of olive cul­ti­va­tion at a mas­sive scale on bar­ren land will end the country’s depen­dency on imported olive oil.

Figures from TrendEconomy, a trade data­base, show Pakistan imported more than €10 mil­lion of olive oil in 2020, the last year for which data are avail­able.

Muhammad Ramzan Ansar, an agron­o­mist at the Barani Agriculture Research Institute (BARI), told Olive Oil Times that the insti­tute has helped farm­ers plant 1.3 mil­lion trees from 2016 to 2021.

He and other offi­cials in the sec­tor say the pro­duc­tion poten­tial of cur­rent plan­ta­tions is about 1,400 tons annu­ally and is expected to keep ris­ing as more trees are planted.

Ramzan said the first olive research and train­ing cen­ter is being estab­lished at BARI Chakwal to advise olive grow­ers and oil pro­duc­ers.

Ramzan added that the qual­ity of olive oil pro­duced in the region is improv­ing and attract­ing cus­tomers.

However, Hashmi warned that car­ing for the trees for the ini­tial two years, before they enter pro­duc­tiv­ity, is very costly for farm­ers and, there­fore, dif­fi­cult to sus­tain.

Though the gov­ern­ment encour­ages olive farm­ing in the coun­try, many still need more sup­port to install drip irri­ga­tion sys­tems and other infra­struc­ture to grow olives prof­itably.

Once Hashmi har­vests his olives, he takes them to a gov­ern­ment-run mill at BARI. He said most farm­ers are depen­dent on the government’s mills to pro­duce their olive oil.

Few farm­ers have the cap­i­tal or the knowl­edge to build their own mills, which pro­duc­ers glob­ally have attrib­uted to higher qual­ity pro­duc­tion.

However, Hashmi believes that Pakistan will soon be able to meet its con­sump­tion needs with­out rely­ing on imports if cur­rent poli­cies con­tinue.

Muhammad Tariq, the national project direc­tor at the Ministry of National Food Security and Research, said there are 26 mills in the coun­try. They can pro­duce an aver­age of 600 kilo­grams of olive oil per hour.

He added that the gov­ern­ment is cov­er­ing 67 per­cent of the costs of pur­chas­ing new olive trees and help­ing farm­ers install drip irri­ga­tion sys­tems.

“Hopefully, in two to three years, Pakistan will sub­sti­tute its import of olive oil with its local pro­duc­tion with this mas­sive scale cul­ti­va­tion of olives and its oil pro­duc­tion in the coun­try,” he con­cluded.