`Record-High Olive Oil and Fruit Yields Anticipated in Iran - Olive Oil Times
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Record-High Olive Oil and Fruit Yields Anticipated in Iran

By Daniel Dawson
Dec. 12, 2022 16:56 UTC
Summary Summary

Iran is expect­ing a record-high olive har­vest of 155,000 to 200,000 tons in the 2022/23 crop year, with 100,000 tons to be used for olive oil pro­duc­tion, which is expected to reach a record-high of 17,000 tons. The increase in olive pro­duc­tion is attrib­uted to the rise in olive tree cul­ti­va­tion in Iran, par­tic­u­larly along the north­ern coast with the Caspian Sea, with plans to fur­ther expand pro­duc­tion to increase agri­cul­tural export rev­enue and boost domes­tic con­sump­tion.

With the har­vest in full swing, offi­cials in Iran expect the Central Asian coun­try to pro­duce between 155,000 tons and a record-high 200,000 tons of olives in the 2022/23 crop year.

While about half of this total will be used for table olives and other olive-based prod­ucts, 100,000 tons are expected to be trans­formed into a record-high 17,000 tons of olive oil.

If it comes to fruition, this year’s olive oil yield would sig­nif­i­cantly eclipse both last year’s har­vest of 10,000 tons and the rolling five-year aver­age of 9,600 tons.

See Also:2022 Harvest Updates

Farmers in Zanjan province, Iran’s largest olive-grow­ing region located in the north­west of the coun­try, told local media they expect to pro­duce 100,000 tons of olives this year, four times the total har­vested in pre­vi­ous years.

Meanwhile, in the south­east­ern province of Sistan and Baluchistan, farm­ers are only antic­i­pat­ing a har­vest of 300 tons of olives but said oil accu­mu­la­tion lev­els are some of the high­est they have seen. As a result, they expect a higher olive oil yield than usual.

Javad Mir-Arab Razi, the head of the Iranian agri­cul­ture ministry’s olive project and the Iranian del­e­ga­tion to the International Olive Council, attrib­uted this increase to the steady rise in olive tree cul­ti­va­tion in the coun­try.

Mir-Arab Razi has spent the last few years encour­ag­ing farm­ers to plant more olive trees along the coun­try’s north­ern coast with the Caspian Sea specif­i­cally for oil pro­duc­tion.

He antic­i­pates olive pro­duc­tion will con­tinue to climb as 4,000 addi­tional hectares of trees planted last year enter matu­rity.

In Qazvin province, the sec­ond-largest olive-grow­ing region in the coun­try located east of Zanjan, pro­duc­ers antic­i­pate a har­vest of 40,000 tons, sim­i­lar to pre­vi­ous years.

Recognizing the grow­ing trend of olive pro­duc­tion in the region, local author­i­ties said they planned to invest in plant­ing mod­ern olive groves and updat­ing exist­ing milling infra­struc­ture.

Mir-Arab Razi said the goal of ramp­ing up olive oil pro­duc­tion is to increase Iran’s agri­cul­tural export rev­enue. The country’s agri­cul­tural sec­tor has become a sig­nif­i­cant source of bring­ing hard cur­rency to Iran after the United States imposed addi­tional sanc­tions on its petro­leum exports in 2018.

However, some farm­ers worry that the bumper olive har­vest will result in lower prices for pro­duc­ers.

To address these con­cerns, Mir-Arab Razi hopes to increase domes­tic olive oil con­sump­tion. According to the International Olive Council, Iran con­sumed 12,000 tons of olive oil in the 2021/22 crop year.

Mir-Arab Razi hopes ris­ing national pro­duc­tion can increase domes­tic con­sump­tion to 18,000 tons in the com­ing years.

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