Olive Oil Becomes an Election Issue in Albania
Olive trees have turned into a campaign issue in Albania, where the election campaign opened this week ahead of the June 23 vote. The prime minister is telling farmers to plant olives as a legacy for their grandchildren; his opponent has been visiting growers who cannot sell the olives they already have. Here is the argument, and the state of an olive sector most buyers know nothing about.
What happened
Campaigning began on Thursday for a parliamentary election on June 23, with Prime Minister Sali Berisha facing Edi Rama of the Socialist Party. Alongside European Union accession and public wages, one of the running arguments is how much the state should put into farming, and olive growing in particular.
Berisha has been touring agricultural districts, urging Albanians to plant olive trees as the safest legacy they can leave to the next generation, citing 1,540 hectares of new groves planted under his government and talking about tens of millions more trees. He has accused Rama of using farmers stuck with unsold stock as a stick to beat the whole policy.
Agriculture is around a fifth of Albania’s economy, and more than half the population still lives in the countryside, so the argument is not a small one.
What the Albanian olive sector actually looks like
The most detailed picture available comes from a value chain study written for a development project in Tirana in 2009. It counted more than five million planted olive trees and said the number was rising fast, helped by steady demand, decent prices and government subsidies for new planting. Olive oil output ran between about 6,400 tons in a poor year and 11,900 tons in a good one, with a structural shortfall of roughly 1,000 tons a year filled by bottled imports, mainly from Italy.
Oil comes mostly from Fier, Vlora and the belt between Elbasan and Tirana, where nearly all the trees are oil varieties. Table olives are a Berat business, and more than 90 percent of the trees there are the local Kokerrmadh. The study counted around 150 working mills, many with second-hand equipment less than fifteen years old, in premises that in most cases would not meet European Union hygiene rules, with no regulatory framework at all for mill waste.
| Albania’s olive sector | Figure |
|---|---|
| Planted olive trees | More than 5 million and rising |
| Olive oil output | About 6,400 to 11,900 tons a year |
| Shortfall covered by imports | About 1,000 tons a year, mostly bottled Italian oil |
| Working mills | Around 150 |
| Table olive center | Berat, more than 90 percent Kokerrmadh |
Trees are the easy part
A country with that many young trees and that much coastline should be able to make good oil. The obstacles are the unglamorous ones: mills that are not clean or cold enough, almost no bottling and branding, weak statistics, and no export reputation to trade on. Much of the oil is still sold loose, farmer to neighbor, which suits everyone locally but earns nothing abroad and makes quality impossible to verify.
That is why the campaign argument is a little beside the point. Planting is the cheapest promise a politician can make and the slowest to be judged: a tree planted this winter owes nobody an explanation for six or seven years. Getting oil out of the trees already standing, in condition to sell in Milan or Munich, is the harder job and the one that needs mills, storage, laboratories and a sales story.
In every emerging olive country I have watched, the money is lost between the tree and the bottle, never in the grove. Fruit arrives at the mill a day or two late, sits in sacks, is pressed warm, then goes into whatever container is available and is stored next to the diesel. The oil that comes out can be perfectly honest and still taste tired. When a government says it will plant fifty million trees, ask who is going to buy the tanks.
Sources
- Olive Oil Times: Olive Oil an Election Issue in Albania (May 30, 2013)
- Leonetti, Imami, Stefanllari and Zhllima: The Olive and Olive Oil Value Chain in Albania, Tirana, 2009 (archived)