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Argentina: Producer of Premium Extra Virgin Oils in South America

Nov. 18, 2021
Argentine Consulate

The Argentine Republic is the largest pro­ducer of olive oil in the Southern Hemisphere, as its out­put ranges between 30 and 40 thou­sand tons of top-qual­ity oil annu­ally.

Less than a fifth of the total is used for domes­tic con­sump­tion, and the rest is exported to highly demand­ing mar­kets. Currently, the olive oil agro-indus­try is among the activ­i­ties with the high­est growth poten­tial in Argentina.

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Argentina’s main advan­tage in terms of olive cul­ti­va­tion for the pro­duc­tion of top-qual­ity extra vir­gin oil is that there are large plan­ta­tions of the appro­pri­ate vari­eties, with indus­trial estab­lish­ments located right next to the plan­ta­tions. This makes it pos­si­ble to extract oil in the short­est pos­si­ble time once the fruit is har­vested from the tree, a cru­cial fac­tor in the qual­ity of the prod­uct obtained.

Therefore, there are inte­grated and con­trolled processes at every stage that guar­an­tee a more effi­cient extrac­tion to obtain top-qual­ity, unique oil.

Photos: Solfrut

In addi­tion, Argentina’s weather is suit­able for olive cul­ti­va­tion, and the coun­try fea­tures appro­pri­ate land areas, water and nutri­ents. These areas are char­ac­ter­ized by a sig­nif­i­cant amount of sun­light for most of the year (e.g., the province of San Juan, in Cuyo). This is a key fac­tor in order to increase the pro­duc­tiv­ity of each plant since as many leaves as pos­si­ble should receive a large quan­tity of sun­light in order to receive the great­est pos­si­ble amount of solar radi­a­tion.

As for the pro­duc­tion stage, there is a grow­ing num­ber of plan­ta­tions in Argentina oper­at­ing under new inten­sive or super-inten­sive agro­nomic mod­els, cul­ti­va­tion sys­tems for opti­mized crop per­for­mance, mech­a­niza­tion sys­tems to reduce the need for labour, and water- and nutri­ent-effi­cient sys­tems. This solves many of the issues that farm­ers had to face in tra­di­tional farm­ing and results in more effi­cient and sus­tain­able crops.

These newly adopted sys­tems enable work­ers to take on more spe­cial­ized tasks through con­tin­u­ous train­ing in the use of new tech­nolo­gies. Some of the fea­tures of this sys­tem include more plants per hectare as com­pared to a tra­di­tional olive grove (1,400 to 2,100 plants per hectare), and fully mech­a­nized har­vest­ing and prun­ing.

This brings cer­tain advan­tages, such as greater pro­duc­tiv­ity per unit of land, and also results in a reduc­tion in farm­ing chores, early entry of crops into the pro­duc­tion stage, and the pro­duc­tion of top-qual­ity oil.

Lastly, another sig­nif­i­cant advan­tage of Argentine olive oil is that, as it comes from the Southern Hemisphere, we can always offer freshly pro­duced oil counter-sea­son­ally to sup­ply the mar­kets and meet the needs of the Northern Hemisphere.

The North American mar­ket is thus a pri­or­ity, based on their needs for extra vir­gin oil, the qual­ity of which is becom­ing increas­ingly renowned around the world.


This spon­sored arti­cle was writ­ten by the Argentine Consulate in New York with the con­tri­bu­tion of José Chediack. For more infor­ma­tion, please con­tact the con­sulate.

The news and edi­to­r­ial staff of Olive Oil Times had no role in this arti­cle’s cre­ation.