Olive Oil Production Gives Back to Environment More than it Takes

Summary

The International Olive Council reports that olive oil pro­duc­tion has a pos­i­tive impact on the envi­ron­ment due to the car­bon sink effect of olive trees, which exceeds green­house gas emis­sions. Council mem­bers plan to present a pro­posal on this topic at the COP22 con­fer­ence in Marrakech, with the mes­sage that olive oil is both healthy and envi­ron­men­tally friendly.

The sig­nif­i­cant num­ber of sci­en­tific stud­ies that have found pow­er­ful links between extra vir­gin olive oil and human health keep on com­ing, and the International Olive Council’s (IOC) June 2016 newslet­ter reports another excit­ing win-win, this time for the envi­ron­ment.

The lat­est research indi­cates that olive oil pro­duc­tion as a whole gives back to the ecosys­tem more than it takes. ​“We now have evi­dence that when the appro­pri­ate agri­cul­tural prac­tices are adopted, the car­bon sink effect (or car­bon seques­tra­tion) from olive trees in the bio­mass and soil is much higher than the green­house gas emis­sions from the pro­duc­tion of one unit (one liter of vir­gin olive oil or extra vir­gin olive oil),” the report states.

Council mem­bers plan to cre­ate a pro­posal for a con­fer­ence on the car­bon sink effect of olive trees to be pre­sented at COP22, a United Nations con­fer­ence ded­i­cated to cli­mate change to be held in Marrakech in November.

That pro­tec­tion of this crop and con­sump­tion of its oil is a pos­i­tive for the envi­ron­ment makes their very exis­tence an ally in the fight against cli­mate change. It’s ​“pre­cisely the mes­sage the IOC wishes to share,” the IOC said. ​“Our mes­sage could be that ​‘olive oil is both healthy and good for the envi­ron­ment.’”

The pro­posal will be drafted at the IOC’s upcom­ing meet­ing in Hammamet, Tunisia. The 27^th extra­or­di­nary meet­ing begins July 11.

The coun­cil praised Tunisia as an active and valu­able found­ing mem­ber of the IOC, con­tribut­ing to research and devel­op­ment in the field of olive oil chem­istry for 60 years. Tunisia, along with Belgium, France, Greece, Israel, Italy, Libya, Morocco, Portugal, Spain and the United Kingdom is a sig­na­tory of the first International Olive Oil Agreement, drafted in 1959.

Today, the coun­try boasts the sec­ond-largest olive-grow­ing area in the world after Spain, with some 800 mil­lion olive trees account­ing for a full six­teen per­cent of world olive acreage.

“Olive grow­ing is one of Tunisia’s main agri­cul­tural activ­i­ties. It plays a fun­da­men­tal social and eco­nomic role, given that sixty per­cent of the country’s farm­ers work in this area and draw all or part of their rev­enues from it,” the newslet­ter stated, also not­ing that the coun­try is the sec­ond-largest exporter world­wide after the European Union.