Farmers worried ‘cheated’ olive oil could drive customers away from local producers

AMMAN — The JD120 million olive and olive oil agricultural industry faces major challenges ahead of the olive harvesting season, including “the selling of cheated olive oil”, spokesperson for the Jordanian Farmers Union Nedal Samaeen, told The Jordan Times on Sunday.

“The olive trees sector occupies around 77 per cent of the total lands for fruitful trees, in addition to contributing around JD120 million to the GDP,” said Mahmoud Oran, general manager of the Jordan Olive Oil Producers Association.

In addition to generating income, the olive tree sector also has “a cultural sentiment” in people’s minds, added Oran.

However, the upcoming olive harvesting season has sparked talk about the challenges that the sector still faces, and unoriginal olive oil being sold is one of them.

“The biggest problem we face is that some con artists have skilfully blended various oils and chemical substances together to trick citizens into purchasing cheated oil,” an agricultural engineer who preferred to remain unnamed, told The Jordan Times on Sunday.

The artists have coined new ways to fake olive oil’s texture to the point where it is indistinguishable except by experts, the source noted. “This creates a problem when it comes to the sales, driving people to buy ready and packaged olive oil instead.”

However, according to Samaeen, citizens are not the primary party affected by the cheating, but there are rather the owners of olive tree farms and the people working in them. 

“Their livelihood depends on it, so if rumours start circulating that the olive oil is cheated, this will seriously affect the farmers who have nothing, but the olive harvesting season to support themselves for the rest of the year.”

“We work hard all year long and then people who do not have basic human decency rob us of our profits with oil that takes less than an hour to make. We feel so helpless,” said Akram Hawamdeh, a farmer whose whole family works in the farm with him and have no other source of income.

“We barely make ends meet even when we have a good sales season, God knows what will become of us if we don’t sell well this year,” Abu Raed, a farmer in Madaba told The Jordan Times.

The related associations and unions, as well as the Ministry of Agriculture, have combined efforts to launch a national campaign to raise awareness about the issue, according to an organiser.

“The campaign will have posters warning citizens to only buy olive oil from the registered and licensed places that will be mentioned,” said Nuha Mheisen, one of the campaign’s organisers.