Production Rebound Still Expected in France After Mixed Harvest

The olive har­vest in France is under­way, with expec­ta­tions vary­ing across the coun­try.

“Estimations are around 4,400 tons, bet­ter than last year but not very big,” Alexandra Paris, the direc­tor of com­mu­ni­ca­tion and econ­omy at pro­ducer asso­ci­a­tion France Olive, told Olive Oil Times.

“The sit­u­a­tions vary sig­nif­i­cantly from one region to another and even from one orchard to another,” she added. ​“We have some very loaded orchards and oth­ers with prac­ti­cally no olives.”

If these ini­tial esti­mates come to fruition, France’s pro­duc­tion total would eclipse the 3,500 tons of olive oil pro­duced in the 2022/23 crop year but fall short of the five-year aver­age of 4,620 tons.

According to François Aurouze, a land and agri­cul­tural expert at Vignoble Conseil, most pro­duc­ers in the South of France began har­vest­ing in mid-October, with most early har­vest pro­duc­ers expected to fin­ish by the end of November.

“The har­vest [took] place in excel­lent con­di­tions this year because the weather is rather dry and beau­ti­ful,” he told Olive Oil Times. ​“The big dif­fer­ence com­pared to last year can be summed up in two points for the South of France.”

“[There was] an abun­dant har­vest… depend­ing on the region, and excel­lent health sta­tus with low pres­sure from the olive fruit fly and very lit­tle brown­ing,” Aurouze added. ​“Therefore, olives were not very prone to pre­ma­ture fall, par­tic­u­larly under the effect of vio­lent winds.”

Meanwhile on Corsica, Maurizi Frédérique, the co-owner of Domaine Petraghje, told Olive Oil Times that the har­vest on the Mediterranean island went well.

“We started the olive har­vest on October 20^th and it ended on November 3^rd,” she said. ​“The har­vest went very well. It was a big year for us, and the quan­tity is much greater than last year. We encoun­tered no prob­lems dur­ing this har­vest like every year.”

Along with improved quan­tity, Aurouze expects a year of high qual­ity based on sev­eral extra vir­gin olive oils that he has sam­pled.

“The first tast­ings of 2023 oil allow us to glimpse excel­lent qual­ity, with dense and per­sis­tent aro­mas with mod­er­ate or weak bit­ter­ness,” he said.

Despite the pro­duc­tion rebound expected this year – although the lat­est data pub­lished by the European Commission fore­casts pro­duc­tion to reach a far more mod­est 3,600 tons – French olive oil pro­duc­tion has not recov­ered the highs of the pre­vi­ous decade, includ­ing the record 6,200 tons pro­duced in 2017/18.

Paris attrib­utes this to the ongo­ing drought faced by south­ern Europe, which was exac­er­bated by a lack of snow­fall in the Alps the pre­vi­ous win­ter.

“The lack of water dur­ing the year and the drought in the sum­mer have had an impact on the pro­duc­tion of the cam­paign,” she said. ​“We know that rain is an impor­tant fac­tor in the drop in yield, but regions have dis­parate sit­u­a­tions when it comes to fall rains. It is, there­fore, still too early to pre­dict this year’s olive oil pro­duc­tion.”