A few weeks before the end of the 2024 olive harvest, the San Juan Olive Chamber reported that a 25% decrease was recorded, a situation that will affect the market. Gonzalo Lenzano, president of the entity, spoke with HUARPE DIARY and reported that this panorama “is generally at the national level, but luckily the province was not so affected.”
“Unfortunately, we had a decrease,” said the president of the chamber, while asserting that, “we are talking about 25% less than last year.” Although he regretted this fall, he somewhat relativized this blow by saying that “luckily here it is less than in other provinces” and that there is demand for the product.
“The decline is due to many factors: some seasonality, since last year we had a high harvest and it usually happens that the following year the yield drops. We were also influenced by the winds at the end of August and a frost at the end of October, beginning of November,” said Lenzano.
Currently, the sector has a total of 15,000 productive hectares in which the harvesting process is carried out in a mixed way, that is, mechanized and manual. The majority is carried out mechanized, since the oil variety is the one with the highest percentage of hectares in the province. For the rest, it is done manually.
Regarding labor, Lenzano clarified that “year after year they have more problems finding workers, but this year there were people due to the shortage that in other provinces has been worse and in that sense it favored us.”
olive theft
A practice that has increased recently by criminals is crop theft. In Mendoza there is great concern regarding this issue and San Juan is no stranger to the problem.
“We have suffered robberies mostly in Pocito, this did not happen regularly. Incidents of insecurity have been happening for some time, but robbery of this type has occurred this year,” said Lenzano.
As for the amount of losses, they have not been able to be quantified at the moment. The action that they plan to carry out from the Chamber is to coordinate a meeting with the mayor of Pocito to raise the situation due to the acts of insecurity that they have been suffering. “Somehow something will have to be done, the situation has become quite complicated in the area.”
Olive oil
San Juan olive oils are known throughout the world and are an industry that does not stop growing. Currently, the province is not the one with the largest area of this crop in the country, but it is one of the provinces with the most production, exporting 175% more than the previous year in the first quarter of 2024.
Among the main export destinations of San Juan olive oil, Europe, Brazil and the United States stand out.
