Rs 14 million olive plantation project launched in Khyber
Pakistan has a curious olive story: millions of wild olive trees on its hillsides, a huge import bill for edible oil, and a long-running national push to marry the two — grafting wild trees and planting new groves to grow an olive-oil industry almost from scratch.
Most countries that grow olives inherited the tree from the Mediterranean. Pakistan’s case is stranger and, in its way, more hopeful: the wild olive already grows across its northern hills in enormous numbers. The national ambition has never been to introduce the olive — it is already here — but to tame it: to turn unproductive wild trees and new plantations into groves that yield oil the country would otherwise have to import.
Why the state keeps trying
The motive is written in the trade figures. Pakistan imports the great majority of its edible oil, a vast annual cost in scarce foreign exchange. Olive oil is one of the few crops that can grow on marginal, rain-fed hill land unsuited to much else, so olive schemes are pitched as a triple win: they cut the import bill, create rural jobs, and put idle land to work. That is why community-farm projects — establishing groves on hundreds or thousands of acres, then handing them to local landholders — recur across the decades.
The grafting shortcut
The clever technical move is grafting. Pakistan’s wild olive (often called kahu) is hardy and abundant but bears small, low-oil fruit. Rather than clear and replant, growers graft productive oil cultivars onto established wild rootstock — which already has decades of root system and drought-hardiness — and get a fruiting tree far faster than from a seedling. It is a genuinely elegant answer to a hard climate, and it turns a liability, all those unproductive wild trees, into an asset.
Why it is a slow game
The honest caution is patience. Olives are not a crop that rewards a single budget cycle: a newly planted grove takes years to bear meaningfully and longer to reach full yield, and success depends on the unglamorous chain that follows the tree — reliable water, skilled pruning, local mills, and growers taught to harvest and handle fruit for oil rather than let it fall. Announcing a plantation is easy; building the mills, the know-how and the market that turn fruit into sellable extra virgin is the decades-long part. Where that patient work has been done, Pakistani oil has started to win international awards — proof the potential is real.
| Starting point | Millions of wild olive trees on hill land |
|---|---|
| The driver | A very large edible-oil import bill |
| Key technique | Grafting oil cultivars onto wild rootstock |
| Heartland | Pothohar plateau & the north-west hills |
| Land type | Marginal, rain-fed, little else grows |
| The constraint | Trees, mills and skills take years to mature |
Practical takeaways
- Pakistan’s olive push is about import substitution — growing oil it now buys abroad.
- Grafting onto abundant wild rootstock is the fast, climate-smart route to fruiting trees.
- Olive schemes suit marginal hill land where little else will grow.
- Results come slowly: groves, mills and skills all take years — patience is the real input.
Pakistan’s olives: common questions
Does Pakistan grow olives?
Yes, increasingly. It has vast numbers of wild olive trees and a long national effort to develop plantations and grafted groves into an olive-oil industry.
Why is Pakistan planting olives?
Mainly to cut a huge edible-oil import bill, create rural jobs, and make productive use of marginal, rain-fed hill land.
What is olive grafting?
Joining a productive oil-cultivar shoot onto hardy wild olive rootstock, so an established, drought-tough tree starts bearing good fruit far faster than a new seedling.
Where do olives grow in Pakistan?
Across the northern uplands — the Pothohar plateau, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and parts of Balochistan — where wild olives are native and plantings are concentrated.
Is Pakistani olive oil any good?
Where the full chain of skilled growing, milling and handling is in place, yes — some Pakistani oils have won international awards, showing the potential is real.
Pakistan’s olive story is a lesson in patience that governments rarely have. The clever part — grafting oil cultivars onto millions of existing wild trees — is genuinely smart, using decades of free root system and drought-hardiness for nothing. The hard part is everything after the tree: mills nearby, growers taught to pick for oil not weight, a market that pays for quality. Plantings make headlines; the quiet decade of building skills and mills makes the oil. Where that has been done, the awards followed.
Pakistan olive-development background; wild-olive grafting and Pothohar/north-west planting notes.