Modern Olive Growing Starting to Overtake Traditional Methods

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Traditional olive farm­ing accounts for 70 per­cent of the total sur­face area of the world’s olive trees and pro­duc­tion from these groves accounts for 60 per­cent of the global total.

Meanwhile, mod­ern high-den­sity and super-high-den­sity groves con­sti­tute only 30 per­cent of the world’s olive tree sur­face area, but their yields account for 40 per­cent of global olive oil pro­duc­tion.

These are some of the facts emerg­ing from research recently pre­sented by the Agri-Food Business School (ESNEA), Intercoop Consultoría and Juan Vilar Strategic Consulting at a con­fer­ence in Spain.

Eighty-seven per­cent of the global sur­face area of olive groves are located in nine Mediterranean coun­tries, where tra­di­tional olive farm­ing still dom­i­nates the scene.

However, in some of the coun­tries, such as Portugal, mod­ern groves now rep­re­sent 64 per­cent of the total olive farms, while in Morocco many tra­di­tional olive groves are being trans­formed into mod­ern (45.7 per­cent) and inten­sive orchards (9.3 per­cent).

While the global sur­face area ded­i­cated to olive farm­ing remains at 11.5 mil­lion hectares, most emerg­ing coun­tries where olive oil cul­ture and olive farm­ing are mak­ing inroads are increas­ingly focus­ing on mod­ern orchards.

Every year, 1.5 per­cent of the cur­rent global olive tree sur­face area is trans­formed into mod­ern or inten­sive orchards, where pro­duc­tiv­ity far exceeds the capac­ity in tra­di­tional groves.

Today, the global sur­face of tra­di­tional orchards remains at 8.1 mil­lion hectares, of which 3.7 mil­lion – nearly one-third – can­not be mech­a­nized. The world has just over 4.4 mil­lion olive farms, with an aver­age size of 2.6 hectares.

Given these num­bers, the Spanish study noted that the path for tra­di­tional olive grow­ing is to invest in qual­ity and dif­fer­en­ti­a­tion, such as organic farm­ing, from which the extra vir­gin olive oil can com­mand higher prices.

Still, mod­ern and inten­sive groves can pur­sue sim­i­lar goals, the experts added, and their prof­itabil­ity can grow even more by effi­ciently man­ag­ing pro­duc­tion costs.

According to the pro­jec­tions, the num­ber of organic olive groves will con­tinue to grow steadily due to the increased demand for sus­tain­able and envi­ron­men­tally-friendly prod­ucts

The study also noted that twelve per­cent of the global sur­face – about 1.4 mil­lion hectares – is cov­ered by diverse and spe­cific types of olive farm­ing: eco­log­i­cal cul­ti­va­tion, attic and emo­tional olive groves, bio­dy­namic and bio-regen­er­a­tive cul­ti­va­tion, groves for bio­di­ver­sity and his­toric olive farms.

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