Olive Oil Production

Olive oil comes from olive trees. A mature olive tree produces 15 to 20 kilograms of olives each year. Since it takes about five kilograms of olives to make a liter of oil, one mature tree is capable of producing only about three to four liters of oil per year. 

A four-member family in the USA consumes an average of five liters of olive oil a year. So to produce that amount of olive oil you need one and a half to two mature olive trees. 

In Greece the average farmer has 8-12 acres of land. If you plant 150 trees per acre, the average farmer will have about 1200-1800 trees. If each tree produces three liters of olive oil per year, then the farmer will produce 3,600-5,400 liters of olive oil. 

The small batch harvest the average farmer produces is not enough to take to market on their own. So instead the average farmer will retain their annual consumption but will sell the balance of their olive oil in bulk to a large scale bottler in bulk.