As Olive Growing Shifts North, Scientists See Deepening Environmental Feedback Loop

Olive cultivation is creeping northward across Europe as irrigation expands across increasingly water-stressed Mediterranean regions. At the same time, yields are becoming less predictable as droughts, heatwaves and erratic weather disrupt long-established growing patterns.

A major new review published in Nature Reviews Earth & Environment argued these changes are not isolated phenomena but part of a larger feedback loop linking food production and environmental degradation.

The paper brought together a broad range of research examining how agriculture affects climate, water resources, biodiversity and ecosystems while also exploring how environmental changes are reshaping agriculture in return. The authors argued that these are no longer separate processes linked by a simple chain of cause and effect. Instead, each increasingly amplifies the other.

According to the researchers, global food systems account for roughly one-third of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions and are becoming increasingly vulnerable to climate-related disruptions.

“Many studies still focus on the one-way impacts of food production on the environment,” José María Mogollón, an environmental scientist at Leiden University and one of the paper’s corresponding authors, told Olive Oil Times. “We wanted to also tie these with the research highlighting that a changing environment due to anthropogenic activities, including food production, also affects agriculture, creating this feedback loop.”

Mogollón said the goal was to show that “the food system and the environment are intrinsically intertwined.”

The review did not specifically examine olive cultivation. Still, many of the dynamics described in the paper are already visible across Mediterranean olive-growing regions.

“The consequences are already being felt,” Mogollón told Olive Oil Times. “Crops are migrating, irrigation agriculture is becoming more prominent, extreme weather events are affecting crops. Eutrophication is affecting fisheries, pollinators are becoming less abundant.”

According to the researchers, approximately 2.2 million square kilometers of water bodies worldwide are already affected by eutrophication, a process in which excess nutrients, mainly nitrogen and phosphorus from agriculture, accumulate in rivers, lakes and coastal waters, triggering algal blooms and reducing oxygen levels.

Nitrogen use is another major source of inefficiency within modern agriculture. The paper estimated that only about 42 percent of the nitrogen applied to agricultural systems is ultimately absorbed by crops. The remainder is lost through runoff, over-irrigation, soil processes and atmospheric emissions, contributing to water pollution, ecosystem degradation and greenhouse gas releases.

The review highlighted that water availability is emerging as one of the clearest pressure points for olive cultivation. Traditionally considered among the most drought-resistant perennial crops, olives are increasingly grown in intensive and super-intensive systems that rely heavily on irrigation to stabilize yields and maintain production consistency. That trend is unfolding even as many Mediterranean regions face worsening water scarcity.

Mogollón also pointed to changes that producers and researchers across the olive sector have been observing for years. “Olives have seen a shift northwards in Spain and Italy,” he said. “They are now being planted in central Europe.”

Commercial groves have appeared in areas historically considered too cold or marginal for olive production, while some traditional producing regions are facing mounting pressure from prolonged drought, heatwaves and increasingly unstable harvests.

“Future production in traditional regions will likely start to lose dominance to emerging regions where the environment becomes more favorable for growing olives,” Mogollón said.

At the same time, the scientist does not expect olive cultivation to disappear from the Mediterranean basin. “Olives are important in European cuisine and also form an important part of Mediterranean history and culture, so I don’t think that they will suddenly disappear,” he said.

The implications extend beyond olive cultivation alone. The review pointed to mounting ecological pressures across agriculture more broadly, including pollinator decline, soil erosion and nutrient imbalances. All crops, even olive trees that do not directly rely on insect pollination, remain closely connected to surrounding ecosystems, including soil microorganisms, insects and semi-natural vegetation that influence long-term resilience and productivity.

In parts of Spain, Italy and Greece, traditional olive groves have functioned for centuries not only as agricultural systems but also as ecological and cultural landscapes, differing significantly from highly intensive monoculture farming.

The scientists argued that making food systems more sustainable is no longer only about reducing environmental harm, but also about preserving the ecological conditions agriculture itself depends on.

“The food system is partly responsible,” Mogollón said, “so we need to ensure that the food system becomes more sustainable to avoid feedback.”