Tunisia is expecting olive oil production at between 90,000 tonnes and 100,000 tonnes this season from 210,000 tonnes in the previous period, officials said on Wednesday. Olive oil accounts for half of the country's agricultural exports, which represent more than 10 percent of its total sales abroad.
More than 500,000 families benefit from the labour intensive olive oil industry, with 56 million olive trees covering about 1.5 million hectares of the North African country. "We expect to gather between 90,000 and 100,000 tonnes of olive oil this season," Kamel Adouani, head of the Olive Oil Farmers Union, told Reuters.
He and other industry and government officials said the expected sharp decline was mainly because last year's large harvest took so long that horticulture for this season was neglected. They also blamed the uneven rainfall.
Farmers begin collecting olives this month and are due to complete the harvest in January.
Tunisia's olive crop yields vary sharply mainly because of drought. The country gathered a record 300,000 tonnes in 1994 and its lowest crop was 50,000 tonnes in 2002.
Comments
Comments are closed.