Turkey leads the world in table olive cultivation

Turkey’s olive harvest in 2024 was 3.6 million tons, of which 750,000 tons were table olives. This makes Turkey the world’s largest producer of table olives and the second largest producer of olive oil.

Turkey has invested heavily in expanding its olive processing capacity over the past 20 years. This season, olive oil production increased by 157% to 475,000 tons. Turkey is therefore looking to optimize marketing to make the most of the increased production.

The country sees exports to the United States as particularly promising. In the 2023/2024 season, Turkey exported $199.5 million worth of olive oil and $16 million worth of table olives to the United States. The goal is to capture 10% of the market. The United States imports $4 billion worth of olives and olive oil annually.

In recent weeks, olive farmers have been pruning and tending their trees in preparation for the flowering season. This year, local offices of the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry have strongly recommended preventing the appearance of ringspot, as this disease, caused by fungal pathogens, can cause significant crop losses.

According to customs data, since the beginning of the 2024/2025 season, the EU has imported a total of 35,654 tons of olive oil from third countries, worth €161.952 million.

The volume of imports decreased by 2.4% compared to the same period last year, while the value of imports decreased by 40.9%. The average price of €4.54 per kilogram was significantly lower than last year’s level of €7.50 per kilogram. This was due to a significant increase in olive production in the EU countries.

The main importers to the EU were

• Italy (+39.0% to 20,200 tons),
• Spain (-58.3% to 6,020 tons),
• France (+17.8% to 5,170 tons).

Last year, Spain harvested a significantly larger crop, with a total of 6.5 million tons of olives grown.

Tags: olive, Turkey, olive oil