Yemen adopts olives as fifth strategic crop

By Dirhem Assufiani and Mahmoud Asssamiee
SANA'A, Oct.04 ( Saba)- Nowadays, Yemen expands growing olive trees across
its cold areas
to make it the fifth strategic crop in the country besides, coffee, honey, palms and
mango.
"The ministry has started growing olive trees during since end of 1970s and the
beginning of 1980s," said Manager of Horticulture Department at the ministry of
Agriculture
and Irrigation Hamid al-Bishari.
He added that the ministry plans to expand the plant to replace Qat tree with olive
so that qat farmer will save great quantities of water used for irrigating qat
tree.
"Olive tree gives you every thing without taking anything," stated al-Bishari.
He made it clear that the tree can endure the drought and only needs three times of
irrigation along the year and then you can leave it to rain water.
Suitable land for growing olive tree According to al-Bishari, Yemeni land is
suitable to grow olive tree because of climate change the country enjoys. "Olive
tree needs
a temperature lesser than 10 degree centigrade," he said.
Agriculture experts affirmed also that Yemen's climate is suitable to grow olive
trees because the country's climate resembles of those countries overlooking the
Mediterranean
region, where the plant is widespread there. "Yemen is a good place to grow the
blessed plant (olive tree) and I saw the country cultivating the plant five years
ago," said
Gibril Mousa, Sudani agricultural expert working for a Yemeni investor.
Yemen grows 800,000 olive trees According to al-Bishari, Yemen has yet grown more
800,000 trees imported from Syria, Jordan and the Arab Center for Studies of Arid
Zones
Dry Lands (ACSAD).
He indicated that these trees have been planted in northern and central heights in
the Capital Sana'a and governorates of Sana'a, Amran, Mahweet, Sa'ada, Dhamar, Ebb,
al-Beidha'a
and Taiz.
Olives sustain the country's economy Economists say that olives can sustain Yemen's
economy. When the plant is spread across the country, Yemen can save a lot of money
it
spends in importing olive fruits and oil from abroad.
According to al- Bishari, olive tree can produce 60 kilograms of fruits, in best
cases. Each kilo grams can be sold for YR 900 and one kilo grams of oil is sold for
YR 1500.
Unlike qat tree, which consumes great quantities of water, olive tree depends on
rain water and can endure drought. This helps in preserving ground water.
Program for olive tree proliferation The ministry has expanded program to
proliferating olive trees, said al-Bishari. The program is funded by the Fund of
Promoting Agricultural
and Fish Production. The program works on having greenhouses to proliferating olive
locally. The ministry also built a center for olive in Qohom arboretum in Sana'a.
He also said there are also three arboretums in Sana'a, Dhamar and Mahweet.
Green fence around Sana'a According to al-Bishari, there is a plan to make a green
fence of olive trees around the Capital Sana'a.
Squeezing olive fruits The Manager of Horticulture Department at the Ministry of
Agriculture and Irrigation Hamid al-Bishari said the ministry made tender
announcement
to buy a number of squeezers to extract olive oil. These squeezers will be
distributed on the areas growing the plant to enable farmers to benefit from it and
then encouraging
others to grow the plant.
Problems facing expand cultivating the tree Experts and officials say that
expand in cultivating olive tree still facing problems mainly represented in
dealing with
olive, taking car of the fruits and extracting the oil.
Al-Bishari also talked about shortage of financial support the ministry needs to
expand growing the plant. He stated that the government has reduced the budget of
the whole
project of the five strategic corps from YR 7 million to only 2 million.
He even says his ministry has not enough budgets to conduct field's visits across
the governorates to sponsor the process of cultivating olive trees.
Profits of olives Olive fruits contain many vitamins and components which are
important for building human body. 100 grams of olive can produce nearly 244
calories. The
fruit also has high nutritional value because it contains high percentage of healthy
oil. Furthermore, the fruit also sustain the appetite.
Scientific studies indicate that leafs of olive tree can be used for the treatment
of several mouth diseases and swellings in the throat. The nucleus of the fruit
can be
used for the treatment of asthma and coughing diseases.
The oil extracted from olive tree can be used as treatment of nerves and for
keeping blood pressure low. The oil also is used for curing chest and abdomen
pains, especially
for children.
The origin of the tree It is believed that olive tree originated in the
Mediterranean area somewhere in Jordan, Palestine, Syria or Lebanon sometime around
2000 years ago.
It spread from these countries to Spain, southern Africa, Australia, Japan and China.
Over 750 million olive trees are cultivated worldwide, 95 percent of which are in
the Mediterranean region. Most global production comes from Southern Europe, North
Africa
and the Middle East.
According to al-Bishari the origin of the tree is found in Yemen for thousands of
years. It is known as (Otom) the name of wild origin of the tree. The kind of
olive tree
was found in Otomah district in Dhamar governorate.