Olives in India: The Rajasthan Experiment
In the mid-2000s Rajasthan set out to grow olives in the desert, with Israeli agronomy and state backing. The horticulture worked. The economics did not. It is the most instructive olive project of the last twenty years, precisely because it half-failed.
Every few years somebody announces that a country with no olive tradition is about to become an olive producer. Most of these announcements are press releases. The Rajasthan project was not — it was a serious, well-funded, technically competent attempt to establish olive cultivation in a desert state, and the way it turned out is worth far more than another success story.
What was actually built
A dedicated company was incorporated in 2007, bringing together the state agricultural marketing board, an irrigation-equipment manufacturer and an Israeli olive specialist. The logic was that if Israel could grow olives in the Negev using drip irrigation on marginal land, Rajasthan — hot, dry, with saline groundwater in places and a great deal of underused ground — ought to be able to do something similar.
More than a hundred and ten thousand saplings were imported, covering seven varieties: Barnea, Arbequina, Cortina, Koroneiki, Picual, Frantoio and Picholine. They went into roughly 180 hectares of government land as a pilot, with subsidised drip systems for private growers alongside. Trees began fruiting from 2012, first in the Bikaner, Sri Ganganagar and Nagaur districts, and the first commercial Indian olive oil was pressed in 2013. Planted area eventually reached several hundred hectares.
| Location | Arid districts of Rajasthan, north-west India |
|---|---|
| Structure | State marketing board, an irrigation manufacturer and an Israeli olive specialist |
| Varieties trialled | Barnea, Arbequina, Cortina, Koroneiki, Picual, Frantoio, Picholine |
| Initial planting | 112,339 saplings on roughly 180 hectares of state land |
| Irrigation | Entirely drip-fed, with heavy subsidy on installation |
| First fruit | 2012, in Bikaner, Sri Ganganagar and Nagaur |
| First commercial oil | 2013 |
| Where it stalled | Downstream — market, price and consumer familiarity, not agronomy |
The trees were never the hard part
This is the lesson, and it applies well beyond India. The agronomy worked. The trees survived, flowered and fruited in a desert, which is a genuine achievement and a credit to the drip-irrigation approach. What did not work was everything downstream of the tree.
An olive industry is not an orchard. It is a mill within a short drive of the orchard, a supply of people who know how to run it, a bottling and quality chain, a domestic market that recognises the product, and a price that lets a grower repay the five years they waited for a crop. Rajasthan built the orchard and much less of the rest. Growers found themselves with fruit and nowhere economic to send it, then with oil and no established buyers. Some plantings have been left unpicked. Some have been pulled out.
The market nobody accounted for
Meanwhile the Indian olive oil market did grow — as an import market, and not in the way the project needed. Consumption skewed heavily towards the cheapest grades. Olive pomace oil, the refined product made from the leftover paste after pressing, accounts for a very large share of what Indians buy, because it is affordable and it withstands Indian cooking temperatures without tasting of anything. Spain supplies the overwhelming bulk of it.
So a domestic grower attempting to sell a small volume of extra virgin oil is not competing with imported extra virgin. They are competing, in the shopper’s mind, with a cheap refined product carrying the same three-syllable word on the label. That is a brutal position, and no amount of good agronomy fixes it. If you want to understand how that gap between grades gets exploited, start with extra virgin that is not.
What the Rajasthan story teaches
- Agronomy is the cheap part. Trees can be made to grow almost anywhere with enough water and expertise.
- A mill within reach decides everything. Fruit that cannot be pressed within hours is not worth pressing.
- Five years is a long time to fund. New plantings need patient capital, not seasonal subsidy.
- The domestic market has to exist first. Or be built deliberately, in parallel with the orchards.
- Cheap grades set the price expectation. Where pomace oil dominates the shelf, quality oil has nowhere to stand.
Olives in India: common questions
Does India actually produce olive oil?
Yes, in small quantities. Commercial Indian olive oil has been produced in Rajasthan since 2013. The volumes are tiny compared with India’s imports.
Why Rajasthan of all places?
Because the climate is hot and dry with mild winters, and because Israeli growers had shown that olives can be established on marginal desert land using drip irrigation. It was a deliberate transfer of that model.
Which varieties were planted?
Seven were trialled: Barnea, Arbequina, Cortina, Koroneiki, Picual, Frantoio and Picholine — a mix of Israeli, Spanish, Greek, Italian and French material rather than a single bet.
Did the project succeed?
Horticulturally, largely yes. Commercially, no. Trees fruited and oil was pressed, but weak markets, limited milling and low prices left plantings unpicked or removed, and the sector has been broadly stagnant.
What kind of olive oil do Indians mostly buy?
Predominantly the cheaper refined grades, with olive pomace oil taking a very large share. Most of it is imported, overwhelmingly from Spain.
I have watched a lot of countries announce that they are going to become olive producers, and the pattern almost never varies : the money goes into planting, because planting is visible and photographs well, and almost nothing goes into milling, storage, training and market development, because those are dull. Rajasthan did the difficult horticulture brilliantly and the dull commercial groundwork badly. If you ever read that a new region is planting a million trees, the only question worth asking is where the mills are going to be, and who is going to buy the oil at a price that lets the grower eat.
Drawn from public records of the Rajasthan olive cultivation project, reporting on its planting programme and subsequent difficulties, and Indian olive oil import statistics.