Within the Gen4Olives project, in which the Italian company Agricolus and the Spanish company BrioAgro work together, to better understand the evolution in recent months and the change that the month of December has brought, we show three graphs: 1) rainfall, 2) leaf wetting, but the most significant is 3) soil moisture. This graph reflects a notable increase in humidity in the most superficial roots, reaching levels of easily available water, something that dryland olive trees had already forgotten.
Despite an improvement in soil humidity thanks to the rains of the first days of December, together with the last rains of October and November, the olives on the tree had already improved. It is observed that while the olives that still remain on the tree continue to increase in weight, we will not know until harvesting if their fat yield will increase. In any case, harvesting has already begun on farms in many plots,which indicates that widespread harvesting will take place on most farms during the month of December. After the passage of the fronts that brought rain at the beginning of December, an increase in temperature has been recorded. We trust that this increase will not intensify so that we can have margin for the logistics of the collection.
Prices and Yields.
The beginning of the olive harvest has shown that oil production may be even worse than last year and the forecasts included in the official capacity, due not only to the fact that there are fewer kilos, but above all to low yields.
If the average fat yield expected in the official capacity of the Junta de Andalucía was 21%, olives are being harvested with yields that range between 14 and 20%. It must be taken into account that three points less yield can translate between 15 and 20% less oil per kilo of olive.
It is added that although the latest data from the Food Information and Control Agency (AICA) showed that oil stocks as of September 31 were only 247,284 tons, the price is already falling, the latter week, at 7.23 euros on average per kilo of oil.
