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Rabat – The volume of the olive harvest in Morocco is set to reach 200,000 tons this year, up 21% from last year’s 160,000, and 145,000 tons in 2019-2020.
The potential increase in harvest input is driven by the significant expansion of olive farming, according to the Moroccan Interprofessional Federation of Olive (Interprolive).
Olive groves in Morocco witnessed exponential growth over the past decade, going from 800,000 hectares in 2010 to 1.2 million hectares this year, Interprolive data suggest.
“This year, we have suffered a lot of heat until well into the harvest, which made us prolong the irrigation period,” a Moroccan expert told Farmers Review Africa, an agriculture-focused platform.
Increasing olive oil production is among the priorities set in the country’s ‘Green Morocco’ agriculture strategy, Mohammed Khannoufi said.
Launched in 2008, Green Morocco represented a state-led program to boost Morocco’s agriculture sector and improve the status of Moroccan farmers.
Under the program, Morocco’s oil production gradually increased over the past two decades, going from an average of 75,000 tons between 2001 and 2010 to 176,000 tons over the last four years, according to data from the International Olive Council (IOC) reported by Farmers Review Africa.
At this rate, Morocco is on its way to becoming one of the world’s largest olive oil producers outside of the European Union, joining a list of countries that includes Turkey and Tunisia, the report indicates.
As a result of Morocco’s efforts to develop the sector, national fruit production today is somewhere between 1.4 million and 1.9 million tons, accounting for 13% of the country’s labor hours within the sector, the expert said.
Once olive farming reaches the national target, it could generate 300,000 jobs in the sector, IOC data indicates.
Adverse weather poses a significant challenge for the sector, as the sector is dependent on irrigation technology to withstand hot and dry weather.
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