Olive farmers hoping for sunny days to harvest better yield

IRBID — Farmers in the Kingdom’s northern region are hoping for more sunny days so they can harvest their olives. 

The farmers told The Jordan Times they have been unable to properly reap their olive fruits over the past three weeks, because of heavy rain, although the harvesting season started in mid-October. 

Sami Obeidat, who was at an olive press in the village of Hibras in Irbid, said the later the harvest, the worse the quality of olive oil is. 

According to Obeidat, November is the best period to harvest olives because they are riper and have higher oil concentrations. 

But if harvesting lasts until the second half of December, the fruits are affected by rainwater, which ultimately affects the quality of oil, lowering its concentration, he explained.

The same concerns were echoed by Mohammad Bsharat, who owns an olive press, and Ahmad Malkwai, an olive farm owner in Irbid’s Kfarat area. 

“We love rain and we always pray for rainfall,” Malkwai said, but farmers are racing against time to have their crops harvested before December as the weather is expected to become harsher. 

Usually the harvest season runs from October 15 to January 20. 

Bsharat noted that rainfall over the past three weeks disrupted the process, with only limited quantities of olives transferred to presses. 

Farmers have only been able to harvest some olives because it has been dry for almost a week now, he added. 

The price of a 16-kilogramme container of oil in Kfarat, home to hundreds of thousands of olive trees, ranges between JD80 and JD85.

Demand for oil is higher than last year and production is expected to be greater, Bsharat said. 

Olive oil production this year is expected to be around 24,000 tonnes, while it was estimated at 22,835 tonnes last year, according to official figures. 

With more than 20 million trees across the Kingdom, Jordan is listed among the top 10 olive producing countries in the world.