As the olive harvest season kicks off in Albania, many farmers are facing a serious challenge: a shortage of available labor. This issue has become particularly pressing, as the cost of hiring a day laborer has risen to between 3,000 and 4,000 lek per day, forcing many farmers to harvest olives themselves.
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| An old man picking olives in Berat |
“There’s simply no labor available, so we’re harvesting the olives ourselves, with a lot of effort,” one farmer explained to Euronews Albania. “A day’s work for a laborer now costs around 35,000 lek. We can’t afford to pay these rates. This year has been dry, which reduced the olive yield, even though we have plenty of trees. We’re just not getting the harvest we expected.”
The shortage isn’t just affecting farmers; it’s also a problem for the local olive oil production industry. Vesaf Musaj, the administrator of an olive oil factory, highlighted the growing struggle to find labor year after year. “It’s extremely difficult to find workers, even for the factory. The situation only seems to be getting worse, and I’m not sure where this is headed,” Musaj stated. “This year, the price hasn’t changed, but the quality is good, depending on the olive variety. It can reach up to 10,000 lek per liter. Farmers should keep up with the harvest, as delays could lead to infections, making the olives unusable later on.”
In the Vlora region, Albania’s largest area for olive cultivation, over 350,000 olive trees are grown, many of them centuries old. These trees are primarily located in the villages of Panaja, Narta, Kanina, Bestrovë, and Trevllazër, where a portion of the harvest is exported to EU countries.