lilianthornstrom

Hi

My husband and I are in the early stages of planning a move to Spain. We are looking at various options and I noticed that there are many properties in land that come with plantations of olive trees that sellers claim will be a source of income.

While that sounds attractive, can anyone in this forum provide an indication of what kind of income that translates to? As an example, are we talking of a 100 - 200 Euros a year for a 4000 sq metres of 70 mature olive trees or is it a considerably larger sum? Is it something that we should be taking into consideration?

We would appreciate any information and I am sure I would have plenty more before we finally make the move

Rosemary

As Concierge for the Spanish section of BE I would like to say hello and welcome.

BE is a very large expat website, so if you have problems finding your way around we have concierges who will try to direct you. The moderators for the Spanish forums are Mitzyboy and Fred James, moderators are there to ensure that the site runs smoothly within the rules of BE. Problems and complaints should always be addressed to a moderador who will look into the matter and deal with it efficiently and fairly. Our members who post in the Spain Forums are friendly and helpful with a wealth of knowledge of the issues of living in Spain. At the top of the page you will find a quirkily named thread called Free Beer which is full of important and useful information. Hope you enjoy your time participating in the forums.

Please let me know if you need any further help.

Rosemary

stuboy

Welcome to the forun Lillian, 100-200 Euros per annum is not worth any effort whatsoever. The skill required to produce a good crop of fruit is learnt over many many years. You clearly have no experience in this field and are unlikely to boost your income by any significant amount. You are paying for land that will become a headache.

TheLostPhotographer

Prices fluctuate for many reasons.

Pointless trying to 'round things up' so to speak, but an Hectare of land should be sufficient for 100 trees each returning an average of €7/tree per year. So, 70 mature olive trees could provide €490 per year, but may not.

Best thing to do is ask the local cooperative in the area.

Most people I know are grateful that someone comes and collects/harvests the olives in return for a couple of 5 Litre bottles of oil for their own use.

It's not a hobby business!

dunmovin

we have 58 trees, from which we usually get 900- 1000 kg per season. The problem is it varies so much in price and you have to consider the yearly outlay(having someone with a tractor come in and turn the ground over, someone to prune the trees.)

The best we ever made was close to 400 euros, but balance that against last year's crop, where storms battered the trees and the olives fell to the ground early,which meant the were worth less per kilo, we gave up and said "next year will be better"

It can be said it's not a hobby and certainly not something you would factor into to your yearly income, but if you have the time and inclination, it's worthwhile for that wee bit extra money, getting to know people you meet at the mill.

We view it as a hobby and will put away the money until we see sometthing we like. then say "the olives paid for that"

betis

Where land has been used over several years to grow olives there will probably be a subsidy attached to it. This is paid regardless of the income from the olives. If you go ahead you should make sure that subsidy is included in the price of the property. People we know didn't and the former owner is still collecting the subsidy. Good luck.

snikpoh

I seem to recall that you need over 100 trees to get any kind of subsidy.


We have a few trees and choose to take the oil in preference to any cash - we then use the oil to barter. For example, friends driving over from UK will bring us various English products in return for olive oil.

lilianthornstrom

My goodness! Thank you for all your replies. It was more than I hoped for and I certainly appreciate the useful information that I have received.

To recap, what I have learned from just this one posting is that any income I might potentially get is not worth factoring into my choices. If there are more than 100 olive trees in a property that I have short-listed, check if its entitled to a subsidy and make sure that it becomes part of the sale.

Thank you so much and I really appreciate the advice

Domino

I was looking at properties over the weekend and one comment that was made was, "and of course we have the olives that give us plenty of oil for our own use. When we first moved here we were getting up to 25litres but at the moment it is down to 15 litres." I looked out at the trees, didnt seem to have had the weeds removed for about 5 years, some higher than the trees. the trees themselves looked sorry, the olives looked very few and poor, and we start harvesting at the end of the year.
So, when I looked out further and saw the way others had nice straight rows, plenty of visible soil, no weeds, I could see the difference and how much hard work would have to go into bringing these trees back into full production.

Olive trees need to have TLC the same way as that gorgeous bush you have on the patio. They don't like battling with other plants for the nutrition and soil space and tend to withdraw from the battle rather than try to win. So you need to ensure the soil around is kept clear of weeds on a regular basis giving them a fighting chance. Then there is the trimming and cutting back and shaping, which to our guiri untrained ways is a doddle - but it needs experience. so it also takes time and money but the only way to make any real profit is to have economy of scale, and a few hundred hectares of good neat tidy trees giving a good output. Otherwise even your own cooking oil will come from the local supermarket.

but remember that Spain has the largest output of olives and olive products, the largest market is Italy - where they add it to their own rubbish along with stuff imported from Greece etc and market it as "Mediterranean Origin".
Spain could do a lot for its own balance of payment deficit if more emphasis was put on to the quality of its product and didnt allow it to be subsumed into other rubbish.

hth

cricketman

Thats true, but actually that is exactly what I've seen Spain doing over the past 10 years with all the dominacion de origin campaigns

And given that you guys tell me that you can buy all kinds of Spanish food in UK supermarkets when there was nothing 5 years ago, then they must be doing a good job there too!

I saw a Guardian article reviewing jamon de bellota from M&S, Waitrose, Sainsburys and Selfridges the other day. That would have been unthinkable just 5 years ago. I couldn't even buy normal olive oil in UK supermarkets back then (not extra virgin)

Domino

Thats good CM, a positive improvement. Although the BH has been living in Spain for 3yrs I have only been here 8months, and didnt see much if any Spanish olive oil in local supermarkets. Usually it was Italian own or "Mediterran", especially if own label or the cheaper products from the likes of Lidl and Aldi. Local Sainsburys had no Spanish, but did stock Greek.
Last year the local Lidl had a campaign and there were Jamon haunches hanging up in the shop. Lots of poking and looking but not many sales as so few knew what to do with it - and £35 was a high premium for such low cost shops. But someone somewhere in Spain got a sale.

The same applies to other products, there is a great movement behind (again Italian) balsamic vinegar but I much prefer the Spanish Sherry vinegar.
Cheeses in Spain are great, locally they get plenty of space for plenty of variety but in the UK the buyers seem to prefer to stack high on processed cheeses, usually with Englsih names but foreign product from know not where.
I recall someone here saying they couldnt get any cheese they liked and looked forward to Red Cross parcels from visiting relatives
I find this all a load of rubbish - when living in a foreign country why not live with the local produce, it is cheaper and quite honestly i have found to be less processed than the stuff from the uK

earlier this year we sent home some bottles of EV olive oil from the local processing plant. have now had 2 requests for replacements already.

olivefarmer

I have lurked as a non member on this site for some time. Here is my first post.

The income you will get is a bit like how long is a piece of string. Identical sized olive trees a kilometre away from each other could give half the weight of the other. Numerous reasons for that of course. Olive trees also have good years and bad years. I have seen some ghastly badly maintained "mature" olives where you would be lucky to get 10Kg a tree. Around here a mature tree delivers around 70Kg on average - not irrigated. So you would be looking at about 4000 Kg a year per Hectare. At the co op ( and it is best to be a co op member) you will get around 30 cents a kilo. So 1200 euros a year.

You will be earning an income (assuming you are under 65- if over 65 you can't earn an income from olives) so will have to pay some form of autonomo. Approx 280 a month but that will give you and your dependent(s) health cover and a pension entitlement if you do it for more than 15 years I believe. There are lower levels but they have lots of hoops to jump through.

Equipment. Bare minimum. Two nets, two fibreglass poles (there will be two of you harvesting- quite boring and hard work on your own), gloves, alcohol, a small trailer, an axe, pole pruning chainsaw. Once you have done one harvest you will probably want to buy a hand held tree shaker.

Spraying. A lot of newcomers think- I won't bother with spraying, I will go Organic. Most change their minds once they see weeds 2 metres high that snag the nets at harvest time. Also the trees respond well to spraying with chemicals and fertiliser. Your local co op will run classes for spraying chemicals and weedkiullers and pruning. In fact to get your money each year you will need to be accredited. Our co op pruning course with lots of hands on is ten days 4 hours a.m. and 4 hours p.m. as an example.

Olive oil is like the milk business in Britain. The factory gate price has and will continue to be mercilessly hammered down. The supermarkets have to make a good profit and the housewife demands low prices. There are two new factors affecting price this year. First is the Spanish oil bought by Italy and then resold as Italian oil has been stopped and secondly the Eu have allowed cheaply produced North African oil into the market. Lower wage costs and possibly no controls over spraying regimes.

EU Grants. Yes these are still in place but won't go on for ever. Again there are some hoops to jump through and as an earlier poster said even if you have olives and do nothing with them, someone will in all probability be claiming the subvention each year. It might be someone who has never owned the land. There is a minimum size of plot. I believe it is a hectare. There are even grants for not tilling the land .

An alternative would be to buy the house which no doubt comes with a parcel of olives that cannot be separated. Strike up a good relationship with the former agricultor of the trees. Let him continue but on a formal in writing basis. The land will be well maintained, trees look good and he will give you maybe 25 litres of oil a hectare and drop off more free fruit and veg than you can shake a stick at. You will also have land around your house to act as a buffer to the "others" with their dogs, noise etc.

Hope that helps.

Domino

Hi OliveFarmer, and

glad we have been able to provoke another "lurker" from the sidelines to actually give us some good information.

All good advice, so when i shuddered at the 15kg per tree I was right, but then as I said previously, the trees didnt look healthy, the fruit now growing didnt look healthy nor prolific, some of the weeds were taller than the trees, really a sorry state.
I would like to spend a year or two with those trees and get them round to a rising output, but I had problems with the property which preclude me from making an offer. I am not from an agricultural background but have been able to save a number of mistreated plants and by just good old common sense get things back on track. Perhaps the word is "patience".

I find it interesting you include "alcohol" - for the workers presumably or do the trees need a quick tubo as well ??

have looked at the oil saga over the years and its relationship with UK's milk, the poor old farmer is at the beck and call of the markets, no 2 years seem the same. You never start cropping how much you are going to get, only after the event do you suddenly realise that for some reason the price has dropped - again...
The only longer term winners in this are those with large estates where the volume is there, the economy of scale, the cost per hectare is lower.

But I am still looking for a property that will include olives (if for no other reason than it's the grand daughter's name), to make the Spanish experience realistic with an output, albeit a few bottles of my own oil for cooking.

Again thanks for your posting and the insight.
Kind regards
Dom

Rosemary

As Concierge for the Spanish section of BE I would like to say hello and welcome.

BE is a very large expat website, so if you have problems finding your way around we have concierges who will try to direct you. The moderators for the Spanish forums are Mitzyboy and Fred James, moderators are there to ensure that the site runs smoothly within the rules of BE. Problems and complaints should always be addressed to a moderador who will look into the matter and deal with it efficiently and fairly. Our members who post in the Spain Forums are friendly and helpful with a wealth of knowledge of the issues of living in Spain. At the top of the page you will find a quirkily named thread called Free Beer which is full of important and useful information. Hope you enjoy your time participating in the forums.

Please let me know if you need any further help.

Rosemary

codex70

If you had a property with just a few olive trees, would it be possible to make your own oil, or just grow for eating? Is the processing involved worth the effort? Do the olives need processing before they're eaten? Sorry for the stupid questions, I've not got a clue (obviously), but when we move it would be great if we could grow enough olives for our own consumption, even if it sounds like commercial production is a struggle.