It is said that the oldest woody plants on the planet are the olive tree, the palm, the fig tree and the vine; for the area that concerns us, the olive tree has historically been cultivated in the geographical area between the parallels 35° and 45° north latitude, in fact, in 1980 there were a total of 23 countries producing olive oil, with an area of just over 7 million hectares, developing in truly inhospitable environments.
Today, French poet George Duhamel’s phrase «where the olive tree ends, the Mediterranean ends» has become outdated. There are already 66 countries that produce olive oil, with a total surface area of 11.6 million hectares distributed throughout these countries. In other words, an area similar to the whole of Andalusia covered with olive trees, to give a simple example. All the olive trees of the planet earth were located in these strips, north from the parallel 35º to 45º, and south from 35º to 41º.
However, the vigor, strength and desire to conquer geographies has no limit, and recently, Michael Pierce’s family has started to cultivate olive trees on the 48th parallel. After a trip to the south of Spain in the late 1990s, where they fell in love with the fields and olive groves, they began their commitment to olive growing. Their first plantation was 1,000 olive trees on about 30 hectares. Today, they have more than 2,500 plants on 75 hectares.
In the Gulf Islands of Canada, on the west coast, there are two olive farms, one dedicated to table olives and the other, larger, oriented to olive oil production. Andrew Butt, was the first farmer to invest in olive groves since 2001 with Frantoio and Leccino varieties. It is the most boreal olive grove on the planet.
But the southern hemisphere could not be less and has a farm on the -43º parallel. Working in this olive grove has become a practice that helps the reinsertion of prisoners in Unit 6 (Institute of Security and Resocialization) of the Rawson Prison, in Argentina. It was in 2021 when the initiative was launched and the first harvest of these «Olive Trees for Freedom» has already been obtained, as Vítor Tomaselli explains, «it all started with 85 olive trees». It is the southernmost olive grove on the planet.
As we can see, Planet Earth is beginning to outgrow the olive tree, in fact, one of its star products, olive oils, is already being consumed outside the planet, and more specifically on the International Space Station, where red romaine lettuce is also successfully grown.
Could this be the prelude to olive cultivation in interstellar space? Could olive trees be grown on Mars?