AMMAN — The price of a 16-liter container of
olive oil
is selling at 20 percent more than the anticipated average of JD80, which
farmers attribute to a rising production cost, particularly the hourly wage of
olive pickers.
اضافة اعلان
Olive oil is a
staple of the
Mediterranean cuisine, commonly used in cooking, such as for
frying foods, or raw as a salad dressing.
Jordan boasts of
11 million olive trees, whose oil is hailed as liquid gold. Olive oil is
produced at the start of the autumn season by pressing whole olives and
extracting the oil.
Harvesting takes
place in September, or October, depending on the climate and average
temperature, or usually following what farmers say must follow the first rainy
day of the winter season.
Last month,
Minister of Agriculture
Khaled Al-Hneifat said that he expected olive oil
production at 30,000 tonnes this year, which is nearly 25 percent more than in
2021. He said the quantity is enough to cover local demand, with a bit more
that can be exported.
Farmer Muhanna
Mousa owns an olive farm in Al-Subaihi in the Balqa Governorate with an
estimated area of 20 dunums. He said that the price of olive oil went up
because of “rising production costs”.
“This is due to
the higher wages of workers, who are now taking JD0.35/kg of olives, as opposed
to JD0.25/kg in the previous season,” Mousa told
Jordan News.
Olive oil is a staple of the Mediterranean cuisine, commonly used in cooking, such as for frying foods, or raw as a salad dressing.
He said that
transportation and plowing wages also increased, but that the Jordanian
Contemporary Society “kept the wages of oil pressing fixed, which is estimated
at JD0.65/kg of pure oil.”
Bishara
Al-Basharat, owner of an olive oil pressing house, said that the price of a tin
of oil “will range from JD95–100 this year, compared with JD75–80 during last
year”.
He said that it
is likely that the price of a tin will decrease toward the end of the season.
Tayseer
Al-Najdawi, owner of another olive pressing plant in the Zay region, said that
olive production this year is better than last year in terms of quality and
quantity.
He told
Jordan
News that the olives were exposed to cold and heat weather in September,
which “led to the improvement of the quality of the fruit, meaning that the
ripening of the fruit came late”.
He attributed
the higher cost of olive oil to several factors. “Transportation wages to and
from the mill are about JD10, but in light of the increase in transportation
and fuel costs, they doubled to almost JD20”, he explained.
He pointed out
that the high costs of fertilizers and labor are incurred by the farmer. But he
explained that oil pressing remained wages have “unchanged for (the past) seven
years, which is JD0.650/kg of virgin, cold-pressed olive oil”.
General
Syndicate of Jordanian
Olive Oil Mills Owners and Olive Producers’ spokesperson
Mahmoud Al-Omari said that the increase in the price of olive oil was mainly
due “to the high demand for buying oil during the production period”.
He concluded
that “local production is expected to achieve self-sufficiency and meet the
market needs.”
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