Olive prayers for the real economy

In an interview with the New York Times in the first months of his tenure, U.S. President Barack Obama spoke about why the country had to implement profound reforms in health, education, finance and industry.

The antiquated American automotive industry, unable to compete with Japanese cars, should renovate its technology, he said, adding that members of the well-educated labor force who were playing with finance for easy money would be returned to their own professions, while the finance sector would be tidied up.

The American president has begun to implement his plans as his first anniversary in office approaches. Following big discussions, legal regulations of health reform have been completed, and a draft law aiming at tidying up the finance sector and bring back the real sector’s forgotten power is also ready.

The draft law foresees the foundation of three new federal institutions to hang above the finance industry like the Sword of Damocles. These institutions will protect consumers and get banks under control. Rigorous measures will also be taken regarding derivative products, hedge funds, credit-rating institutions and executive pay. 

As a result, the real sector regaining its old power in time should not be a surprise. It will be inevitable as well that the changes in the United States will affect other regions as the period of making money from money comes to an end.

I think that the industrialization of agricultural production in Turkey will be among the values on the ascent in the new period. Waste of agricultural resources is now partially under control after the post-2001 restructuring. In fact, the contraction in agriculture has revealed new unemployed people by accelerating rural depopulation. However, this transition period’s difficulties can be dealt with in time through modern agricultural and stockbreeding enterprises and an agriculture-based industry.

Olives and olive oil are a recent example. At the 5th Olive Harvest Festival in Ayvalık last week, some points aroused my attention. First, the spectacle of collecting olives with machines was very important. When I asked one of my relatives who has been in the olive business for years why there are “have” years and “have-not” years in olives, he replied: “We are collecting olives after dropping them on the ground by striking the trees. With each blow, boughs are breaking. Because of this, one year they bear fruit and the next year they do not.”

Turkey’s biggest competitors in the sector, such as Italy and Spain, started collecting olives with machines a long time ago.

Tuncay Özilhan, the board chairman of Anadolu Group, and a new olive grower, was also in Ayvalık. We watched together how olives are collected with machines. There are two kinds of machines at work here; the more high-tech one enfolds the tree in its arms and vibrates it for three to five seconds, until the tree drops its olives on a clean cloth.

Özilhan liked this machine and advised buying five to 10 of them to be hired out to olive growers in the region. It has also been said that Anadolu Motor could work on incorporating production and assembly in the long term.

Here is a simple example of how agriculture and agriculture-based industry can develop; of how, in fact, Turkey could become the second-biggest country in terms of olive-tree numbers.

In Turkey, there are 105.26 million trees that bear fruit and 40.14 million that do not. With an average, 11.7-kilogram olive yield per tree, there will be 1.23 million tons of olive production – some 410,000 tons of which will be reserved for table olives and 818,000 tons of which will be used as oil. An aggregate of 169,752 tons of olive oil will be obtained from this amount.

According to a forecast by the National Olive and Olive Oil Council, there will be 1.126 million tons of olive production this year. Some 389,000 tons will be reserved as table olives and 147,491 tons of olive oil will be produced.

However, exports can cost more as the European Union levies taxes of 1,400 euros per ton on packaged and branded products from Turkey. For this reason, the domestic market is more important for now.

Olive-oil consumption per capita is nearly 1.5 kilograms in Turkey, less than what Europeans consume. However, olive oil’s benefits – from reining in cholesterol to protecting against cancer – make it one of the healthiest products in the world, a fact that is increasing global consumption. In Turkey, the first aim is to raise consumption to three kilograms per capita.

The Ayvalık Olive Harvest Festival and the Olive and Olive Oil Festival held recently in Akhisar are very important steps in promoting the olive sector. Let us finish then with an olive prayer that the Ayvalık mayor taught festival attendees:

Your life;

To be long-lived as the olive tree

To be abundant as olive grain

To be healthy as olive oil.

* This column was originally published by business daily Referans on Nov. 13.