IOC Leader Focuses on Expanding Cultivation, Fighting Climate Change

“Climate change is the major chal­lenge we face ahead,” Jaime Lillo López, exec­u­tive direc­tor of the International Olive Council (IOC), told Olive Oil Times.

“I have requested the sup­port of the IOC’s mem­bers to start a per­ma­nent work­ing line on this mat­ter,” said Lillo, who served as deputy exec­u­tive direc­tor for more than seven years and took the helm of the orga­ni­za­tion on January 1^st.

Established in 1959 with the International Olive Oil Agreement and under the aus­pices of the United Nations, the International Olive Council brings together the olive oil and table olive pro­duc­tion sec­tors. Currently, 19 coun­tries from four con­ti­nents are IOC mem­bers.

During a con­ver­sa­tion with Olive Oil Times, Lillo under­lined how sev­eral steps must be taken to cope with increas­ingly unpre­dictable weather con­di­tions.

“We need to facil­i­tate the adap­ta­tion of pro­duc­tion. The olive tree is a very resilient liv­ing organ­ism,” Lillo said.

“For exam­ple, olive trees are grow­ing on the edge of the desert, and oth­ers have lived for thou­sands of years,” he added. ​“They can sur­vive in extreme con­di­tions, given that they need less water or nutri­ents than other crops. However, we need to under­stand bet­ter the rela­tion of the dif­fer­ent genetic vari­eties of olive trees with the chang­ing envi­ron­ment.”

The IOC exec­u­tive direc­tor under­scored how olive farm­ing actively con­tributes to mit­i­gat­ing the impact of agri­cul­ture on the envi­ron­ment.

“There is a role for olive cul­ti­va­tion within the strat­egy to com­bat cli­mate change,” Lillo said. ​“Not every­body is aware that behind olive oil or table olives, there are more than 11 mil­lion hectares of olive trees, form­ing a kind of man­made for­est that removes 4.5 tons of car­bon diox­ide per hectare from the atmos­phere on a yearly basis.”

“We have esti­mated that the pro­duc­tion of one liter of olive oil has a pos­i­tive car­bon bal­ance, reduc­ing more than 10 kilo­grams of car­bon diox­ide from the atmos­phere,” he added. ​“Not only is this fact quite unique, but it is also con­sid­er­ably unknown.”

“We are work­ing to facil­i­tate the right method­ol­ogy for esti­mat­ing the car­bon bal­ance at the farm level to encour­age bet­ter prac­tices and to facil­i­tate good com­mu­ni­ca­tion and recog­ni­tion, includ­ing access to the vol­un­tary mar­ket of car­bon cred­its,” Lillo explained.

According to Lillo, the IOC’s long-stand­ing com­mit­ment to stan­dard­iza­tion and research dri­ves the growth in olive oil pro­duc­tion out­side the olive tree’s cra­dle, the Mediterranean basin.

“In my opin­ion, this trend will con­sol­i­date and is indeed great news for the future of olive oil,” Lillo said. ​“There is a need for more olive oil, and qual­ity olive oil in par­tic­u­lar. If we take the last crop years, we observe that there is not enough olive oil to respond to the grow­ing global demand.”

“We are already wit­ness­ing the impact of cli­mate change on olive oil pro­duc­tion. Particularly in the Mediterranean region, we have observed a ten­dency toward less rain­fall and higher tem­per­a­tures,” he added.

According to IOC’s fig­ures, global olive oil pro­duc­tion in the 2022/23 crop year reached 2.57 mil­lion tons and 2.41 mil­lion are expected for 2023/24. Global pro­duc­tion exceeded the three mil­lion ton thresh­old between 2017/18 and 2021/22.

“By diver­si­fy­ing regions of pro­duc­tion, we are also diver­si­fy­ing the risk of the impact that extreme cli­mate events have on over­all pro­duc­tion,” Lillo said.

Lillo sees global coop­er­a­tion among pro­duc­ing coun­tries and stake­hold­ers as cru­cial to the sec­tor’s devel­op­ment.

“I do not see a con­flict or com­pe­ti­tion between the Mediterranean and other regions. On the con­trary, what I see is com­ple­men­tar­ity and syn­ergy,” Lillo said. ​“Proof of this is the increase in the num­ber of lab­o­ra­to­ries and tast­ing pan­els rec­og­nized by the IOC, both in the Mediterranean and non-Mediterranean regions.”

In its efforts to expand the foot­print of the IOC beyond the Mediterranean basin, Lillo said the orga­ni­za­tion will host its first Southern Hemisphere edi­tions of the Mario Solinas Quality Awards in Uruguay in 2024.

“By diver­si­fy­ing regions of pro­duc­tion, we have dif­fer­ent har­vest cal­en­dars, fla­vors and other speci­fici­ties that come to enrich the cat­e­gories of olive oil,” Lillo said.

“At the moment, not only is global demand grow­ing faster than pro­duc­tion, but we should also not for­get that olive oil rep­re­sents about two per­cent of the global con­sump­tion of veg­etable oils,” he added. ​“This means there is still room for growth, and all pro­duc­ing regions are wel­come.”

While olive oil con­sump­tion in many regions might depend on the prices of the prod­uct, the short­age of olive oil is unevenly affect­ing con­sump­tion trends.

“It is an obvi­ous fact that the con­sump­tion of olive oil is lim­ited by the avail­abil­ity of olive oil pro­duced every crop year,” Lillo said.

“We see con­sump­tion more affected in tra­di­tional pro­ducer coun­tries where olive oil con­sump­tion is high, around 10 kilo­grams per capita,” he added. ​“In those Mediterranean coun­tries, olive oil is a prod­uct con­sumed on a daily basis, mak­ing it more sen­si­tive to price changes.”

“Overall, con­sump­tion is mov­ing from the tra­di­tional Mediterranean region to other regions, such as the United States, Brazil, Japan, Canada, Australia or China,” Lillo con­tin­ued.

He said that inter­est in olive oil is increas­ing as peo­ple learn more about the health ben­e­fits and seek more sus­tain­able ways to eat and live.

“We need to feed this process with the abun­dant sci­en­tific evi­dence we have in this regard, mak­ing it eas­ier for new con­sumers to dis­cover the prod­uct,” Lillo said. ​“Once you try a good olive oil, you sim­ply don’t want to give it up.”

“The grow­ing inter­est in liv­ing health­ier is also cou­pled with a greater con­cern regard­ing sus­tain­abil­ity and cli­mate change,” he added. ​“Olive oil and table olives are in a priv­i­leged posi­tion when it comes to these mat­ters, on top of the fact that they are deli­cious.”

In recent years, the num­ber of IOC mem­ber states has grown. According to Lillo, such a trend under­scores the crit­i­cal role the orga­ni­za­tion is play­ing in sup­port­ing the devel­op­ment of the sec­tor on a global level.

“I believe this enlarge­ment will con­tinue, as there are numer­ous advan­tages for coun­tries devel­op­ing their olive sec­tor or pro­tect­ing the rights of their olive oil con­sumers,” Lillo said.

He believes that one of the main rea­sons states join the IOC is to access the organization’s exper­tise in olive cul­ti­va­tion, table olive and olive oil pro­duc­tion.

“We have the most knowl­edge­able experts com­ing from all over the world to dis­cuss the main chal­lenges and oppor­tu­ni­ties regard­ing genet­ics, cul­ti­va­tion prac­tices, stan­dards, qual­ity, sus­tain­abil­ity, cli­mate change, health, eco­nom­ics or mar­ket­ing, just to men­tion a few of our many areas of work,” Lillo said.

“This knowl­edge exchange hap­pens for­mally dur­ing meet­ings or sem­i­nars, but there also exists a sub­stan­tial net­work of experts in per­ma­nent com­mu­ni­ca­tion,” he added. ​“Hence, the IOC rep­re­sents a prime oppor­tu­nity for all pro­duc­ing regions to be con­nected to this vast and valu­able pool of knowl­edge.”

Lillo empha­sized that coop­er­a­tion among olive-grow­ing and non-olive-grow­ing coun­tries is essen­tial to respond to chal­lenges posed by cli­mate change.

“This is how we face cur­rent chal­lenges at the IOC: we facil­i­tate the ongo­ing col­lab­o­ra­tion between the best experts from dif­fer­ent parts of the world across all spe­cial­ized fields,” he said.

“As an exam­ple, I can refer to the inter­na­tional work­shop orga­nized last year on how the olive sec­tor can con­tribute to the solu­tion against cli­mate change, “ he added. ​“On this occa­sion, the IOC wel­comed 300 expert par­tic­i­pants from 30 coun­tries.”

According to Lillo, the broad reach of activ­i­ties entices stake­hold­ers and insti­tu­tions beyond the Mediterranean basin.

“Some coun­tries have tra­di­tion­ally not paid enough atten­tion to how to defend the rights of their olive oil con­sumers,” Lillo said. ​“However, it is in their inter­est to ensure a pos­i­tive expe­ri­ence every time their con­sumers open a bot­tle of olive oil, regard­less of its ori­gin.”

“When we look at the stan­dards for olive oil, one of our core activ­i­ties, the IOC works con­tin­u­ously in the revi­sion of para­me­ters and meth­ods of analy­sis,” he added. ​“We believe that par­tic­i­pat­ing actively in this sci­en­tific work is highly inter­est­ing, and we always invite inter­ested coun­tries to par­tic­i­pate.”

Lillo said the value pro­vided by the IOC to all of its mem­bers has been enhanced by the acces­sion of non-Mediterranean coun­tries, such as Argentina and Uruguay in 2017, along with the more recent edi­tions of Georgia in 2019, Uzbekistan in 2021 and Saudi Arabia in 2023.

“There are also other coun­tries cur­rently in the process of acces­sion, such as Bosnia and Herzegovina and Azerbaijan,” Lillo said. ​“Other coun­tries that have shown inter­est in the IOC are par­tic­i­pat­ing as observers, as is the case of Brazil, Peru or the United States.”