Heat and drought plague Spanish olive harvest

The olive harvest in Spain is disappointing this year due to the extremely dry and hot growing season. This year, mainly due to the moderate fruit set in the warm April month, there are a lot fewer olives on the tree than desired. Thanks to a high price per kilo, the loss of yield is partly compensated.

 

Last week, Nieuwe Oogst visited an olive orchard in Alcañiz, a town in the Aragón region in northeastern Spain, during a press trip for European agricultural journalists. At that time, some of the olives from grower Alfredo Caldú Celma were harvested.

 

According to Celma, the drought was a problem everywhere in Spain this year, but his olive trees were actually hit even harder by the heat in the spring. 'It was extremely hot in April. As a result, the flowers burned, became detached and the fruit set of the remaining flowers also failed.'

 

The result is that there are now a lot fewer olives on the tree. "Fortunately we have drip irrigation here, which allows us to keep the drought in check reasonably well," the grower continues. “80 percent of olive growers in this region do not have an irrigation system, so we have an advantage in that respect.”

 

The vast majority of the Aragon region has a maritime climate. Other parts of the region have a Mediterranean climate, which is strongly influenced by the temperate continental climate. Alcañiz is located in the Bajo-Aragón subregion, almost at the transition between the two climate types.

 

The average temperatures in most places in Aragon are slightly lower than in places closer to the coast. The average precipitation is low and evenly distributed throughout the year. Summers are quite warm with daytime temperatures around 30 degrees, winters are relatively mild.

 

This year Spain experienced the warmest and driest April since 1961, the year in which weather data began to be kept. In the south of the country, the temperature already reached almost 40 degrees in April.

 

The ongoing drought in Spain is increasingly taking its toll on the agricultural sector. It has been extremely dry in the southern European country for the past two years. Anyone who drives through the Aragón region from Zaragoza to Alcañiz will see that it is still bone dry. Here and there, contractors harvest grain corn for the pigs and mainly alfalfa grows there. There is hardly any arable farming, except for some winter grain crops.

 

Celma explains in the 47 hectare orchard that this year all olives will be processed into olive oil. Normally, olives of the Empeltre variety are also sold as table olives, but according to the grower, the quality is too poor for that this year.

 

Celma currently receives a good price for olive oil from his sales organization Aceite del Bajo Aragón. “Three years ago we paid 3 euros per kilo, now the prices are between 9 and 10 euros per kilo,” he says with satisfaction. “But that is also necessary to compensate for the lower yield.”

 

A healthy and vigorous tree can produce up to 20 kilos of olives, but that number will not be reached this year. The average production of an Empeltre olive tree in mature orchards (7-20 years old) is 500 kilos per hectare on dry land and 3,000 kilos on irrigated land.

 

Celma: 'It is estimated that we will harvest a total of 100 tons this year, which means a production of approximately 2,000 kilos per hectare. In 2022 the olive harvest was only 70 tons, so compared to last year the yield is slightly better.' The trees of the Spanish grower are 26 years old.

 

A tree shaker at the front of the tractor shakes the trunk twice per tree. The fruits end up in a collection container. For the olives to fall easily, they must be sufficiently ripe. The tractor driver empties a full collection container into a trailer. When it is full, a Celma colleague drives the olives to the processing location of Aceite del Bajo Aragón.

 

The olives are unloaded into a receiving hopper. Conveyor belts then turn the fruits inwards. There they are pressed into olive oil after a number of sieving and separation systems. There is also a selection machine for processing table olives. The marketing organization expects that it will be used less this year due to the average quality of the olives from all growers in the Baja Aragón region.

 

This region has more than 4,500 olive growers on an area of approximately 22,000 hectares. 70 percent of the olive groves in Aragón are located in Bajo Aragón. Aceite del Bajo Aragón processed 14 million kilos of olives into 2.8 million kilos of olive oil in the previous campaign (2022-2023).

 

In the campaign for this, the marketing organization turned 40 million kilos of olives into 10 million kilos of olive oil. That says everything about the effect of the extreme growing conditions in the past year. The processing volume of the current campaign is estimated at between 4 and 6 million kilos of olive oil.

 

Most of Aceite del Bajo Aragón's olive oil stays within the European Union, with about 10 percent going to the United States. Due to the poor payout prices in recent years, Celma's company was making a loss. But he is hopeful about the future due to the favorable market situation and also has investment plans.

 

The olive grower is thinking about growing other crops in the future, but he does not yet know exactly what they will be. In addition to olive trees, the Bajo Aragón region also has almond trees, peach trees and vineyards to a lesser extent.

 

Spain annually accounts for 50 percent of global olive oil production. The drought is making oil increasingly scarce and expensive. According to Celma, consumption in Spain itself has decreased by 25 percent in recent years.