Sometimes I talk more about olive oil than Popeye talks about his Olive Oyl. I'm not alone. That's because the olive is the most extensively cultivated fruit crop in the world, according to FAO. Statistics are so fun, so here is your party small talk:
- Olive cultivation area has tripled in the past 50 years, passing from 2.6 to 8.5 milion hectares.
- The world has 23 million acres of olive trees, producing 1.5 million tons of table olives and 16 million tons of olive that are processed in 2.56 million tons of oil.
- Spain has about ¼ of the world’s acrage of trees under cultivationand 36 to 40% of oil production on average
- The top four producers in the world are Spain, Greece, Italy and Tunisia
