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<pre>A few days ago I had my first olives harvest: about 300 kilograms; not bad if
you consider that my orchard is only 5 years old and frost (-16°) practically
destroyed all my 500 plants in 1996 .The oil yield was only 11%. By these
preliminaries let me do some brief reflections on my account book.

I spent Lit 270.000 for refuelling, Lit 36.000 for fly-traps, Lit 82.000 for the
mill : total=Lit 388.000 ($US 206). Each bottle and label will cost 1 more $US.
It means my oil cost me $US 7.2 a liter.

But you should consider I cut drastically down my expenses working completely on
my own. I had no pruning cost ($US 400), no harvesting cost (the pickers get
paid in olives, they get normally 50% of the harvest), no ploughing costs;
moreover I had no fertilizers and no spraying copper costs as I'm testing
biological agriculture and I had not parasitic problems.

Include the above adjunctive costs and calculate by yourself the cost of one
liter of oil.

In this circumstances I'm obliged to compete in quality. Since I have a
specialized orchard I will have some chances to sell profitably only if I
produce biological and DOP oil.

Anyway let me say I'm really perplexed about the oil low prices in supermakets
(even $US 3 !!! in Italy).

Any comments ?

Antonio

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http://www.geocities.com/~gianno
janoant@tin.it
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