Morocco and olives
I found a study publlished in 1997 about Olives in Morocco, it’s old, but very interesting:
By Jeremy Martin,
Thoughts of olives on a pizza or olives in a salad make one think about Greece, Italy and even Spain. However, Morocco is second only to Greece in exports of olives to the world market and are one of Morocco’s primary exports. The increase in olive production in Morocco has in many cases served farmers well, yet it seems to simultaneously have environmental impacts.
The degradation of the land in Morocco, caused in part by increased agricultural production, is an important issue to be cognizant of when entering a discussion of Moroccan agriculture and her olive subsector.
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How to prepare Olives yourself
My big, fat Greek olive-making tradition harvest predicted to be bad for 2006, so here is how to make them yourself.
By Sophia Markoulakis,
I was weaned on my Greek grandmother’s olives. Her basement was olive central, and the acrid smell of her enterprise permeated the walls, leaving a mark in my memory and in the cavernous room that stores remnants of her legacy.
Tart, cracked green takistes olives, split with a brick, were placed in buckets of water to leach out the bitterness. Gallons of plump and fleshy purple royal olives, slit, soaked and flavored with heavy doses of vinegar and garlic, were also prepared here.
Missionaries introduced the first olive tree to California via Mexico during the late 1700s and named it ‘Mission.’ One hundred years later, other varieties, such as the ‘Manzanillo,’ ‘Sevillano’ and ‘Ascolano,’ were brought to California and have become the state’s most popular table olive varieties.
According to the California Olive Industry’s Web site, 70 to 80 percent of the ripe olives consumed in the United States come from California. But recent reports suggest that California is prime for an olive oil boom while the table olive industry is suffering from bad weather, overseas competition, decreased packing facilities and the olive fly, which is attracted to the table olive’s large fruit. An article Sept. 14 in the Los Angeles Times reported that the 2006 olive harvest is projected to be the worst the industry has seen in 25 years, and the consumer is likely to feel its effects.
So what’s an olive lover to do?
[Source] Click here to continue and to know how you can make them yourself
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The olive branches out
All fashionable gardens are sporting a smart new accessory – the olive tree, discovers Lila Das Gupta
“Ten years ago it was hard to get hold of olive trees,” says Wayne Page, a garden designer in west London. “I would have to order them specially and have them imported. Now it’s so much easier.” Together with tree ferns and phormiums (flax), olives have soared in popularity with city dwellers, says Page. “Everyone likes them. They’re evergreen, but they have open, light leaves, and as they are silvery in colour, they really reflect the light.”
But it’s not just the look that appeals: the size of olive trees makes them ideal for urban spaces, too. “Olives are perfect for small gardens. There aren’t many ‘small’ garden trees that actually stay small,” says Page. “An olive tree will never get unmanageable. I would say buy them in at the height you want – they will stay that height for quite a while.”
Ian Kitson, the former Chairman of the Society of Garden Designers, has also noticed the olive explosion. “They have really started to take off,” he says. “Some of it is due to climate, some of it to availability.”
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Morocco seeks foreign investment in agriculture
Morocco is eager to lure more foreign investors from Europe and the Arab Gulf region to help it modernise its agriculture as it prepares to lease more state-owned farms, a farm official said on Friday.
The government leased a first batch of state-owned farms to 173 investors, some of them foreigners, last year. The first offer of 45,000 hectares attracted 4.7 billion Moroccan dirhams ($539.8 million).
A banking consortium, including two subsidiaries of French Societe Generale, has set up the Olea investment fund to grow olive trees and produce high quality olive oil in Morocco.
The fund plans to invest 1.8 billion dirhams to create 10 olive farming units of 1,000 hectares each to produce 30,000 tonnes of high quality extra-virgin olive oil per year.
“We expect to wrap up the lease operation of the second tranche by September next year. The investment in these farms will total 5 billion dirhams,” Hajjaji said. That would come on the top of state revenue from the lease licences for 40 years.
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Casualties of the oil business
Intensive olive production is killing the wildflowers of the Med. Mary Keen reports
The European Union is doing terrible things to wildflowers in the olive groves of Europe. One of the pleasures of springtime in Mediterranean countries used to be finding little yellow tulips and wild gladioli, or seven kinds of orchid in the stony soil under olive trees. Adam Nicolson wrote recently in this newspaper about spring in Ithaca, where flowers are scattered across the island “like scraps of beautiful multi-coloured confetti” in a landscape of “shining, untramelled freshness”. He was lucky.
In Corfu in February, I noticed that the grass was looking rank and had turned that shade of green that only high-nitrogen fertilisers can produce. I was looking for jonquils, but I saw nothing but heavy grass. As I drove through a village, I noticed an old man flinging pellets in the air, as though he were feeding chickens. He was feeding the olives.
Old trees everywhere on the island – and all over the Aegean, as well as in Italy, France and Spain – are being dosed with chemicals to kick them into production. Substantial grants are paid for this, at the expense of the wild flowers, which cannot survive in nitrogen-rich soils.
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