by Marwa Yahya, Ashraf Suwilam
NORTH SINAI, Egypt, Feb. 26 (Xinhua) -- As the world's second largest exporter of table olives, Egypt is devoted to boosting olive production by reviving olive farming in North Sinai that had been devastated by terrorism for years.
North Sinai Province, northeast of Egypt's capital Cairo, used to be famous for its olive trees and quality olive oil, which brought considerable profits and thus provided the most important source of income for the locals.
However, olive cultivation has eroded greatly in recent years as terrorist groups made North Sinai their stronghold after the 2013 uprising that led to the downfall of an Islamist regime.
The terrorists in North Sinai have burned olive trees and dehydrated agricultural land, detonated electricity grids, and destroyed agricultural wells on which the residents depend for watering the olive trees.
"Before 2014, 35,000 feddans (14,700 hectares) were planted with olive trees in North Sinai, producing about 75,000 tons of olives annually," Atef Matar, undersecretary of the Ministry of Agriculture and Desert Reclamation in North Sinai, told Xinhua.
After a slight rebound from 2015 to 2017, the olive production in North Sinai declined sharply to only 10,000 tons in 2021 as the planted area has shrunk to nearly 4,000 hectares amid a comprehensive anti-terrorism campaign, according to Matar.
Terrorist activities have dealt a blow to the olive oil production industry and many mills were closed, the Egyptian official noted.
"Since the 1980s, North Sinai has been producing olive oil enough for local consumption and export," said Fouad Al-Azar, owner of the oldest olive mill in the Sinai Peninsula.
However, terrorism has destroyed many olive farms in North Sinai and caused the closure of most mills and the sharp reduction of working hours and workloads in the remaining ones, Al-Azar lamented.
"I used to earn 300 Egyptian pounds (19 U.S. dollars) per day during the three-month olive squeezing season, and we worked in the olives farm for another wage during the rest of the year," said Mohamed Salma, a 47-year-old worker in an olive mill in Al-Arish city.
"Now most of the workers and farmers are unemployed along the year," he added.
In 2019, Egypt's Ministry of Agriculture and Land Reclamation announced its plan to plant 100 million olive trees by 2022 by offering land plots to investors.
On Feb. 5 this year, Minister of Agriculture and Land Reclamation Al-Sayed Al-Qaseer gifted the farmers in North Sinai 5,000 olive trees, noting 2,048 hectares of land were reclaimed and are good for planting olive in central Sinai.
Al-Sayed, The Egyptian government aims to plant 210,000 hectares in the Sinai Peninsula in the national projects of desert reclamation, where olive will take the lion's share. ■