International Olive Council

Olive oil producers are improving irrigation and seeking new varieties of olives to safeguard production as climate change upends harvests, causing prices of the staple of the Mediterranean diet to soar.

"Climate change is already a reality and we need to adapt to it," according to the executive director of the International Olive Council (IOC) Jaime Lillo.

Global production of table olives is expected to increase during the 2021-2022 crop year, according to the latest estimates from the International Olive Council (IOC). However, according to the same data, in Greece the drop in production of table olives this year (2021-2022) is expected to exceed 20%.

There is something beyond the Mediterranean Sea that bounds the countries sharing its shores: The olive. The olive tree is mentioned from the Torah to the Bible and eventually in the Quran. In the Quran it is mentioned as the "?ecere-i Tayyibe," a beneficial fruitful tree, or functional if it can be described as such.

World olive oil production will fall to the lowest in 15 years in the season through September 2015 on plunging output in Spain and Italy, the biggest growers, the International Olive Council predicted on Tuesday.