High-quality olive oils are produced in Montenegro, but in terms of space and capacity, the peak has not been reached, the owner of the Moric Olive Farm, Ilija Moric, said and added that there is great potential for organic olive oil production.
“We have somewhere around half a million trees in Montenegro, and I believe there are potentials for a million or two.” That says enough that we have not reached our peak in terms of space and capacity,” said Moric, whose organically certified farm in the village of Tići in Luštica grows olives and produces extra virgin olive oil.
“Variations in harvests and crops from year to year make us vulnerable, because one year we can have high quality and not so much quantity, and the next year there is no oil, that is, there is an interruption.” So it is necessary to have all three elements – quality, quantity and continuity“, Moric explained to the journalists of the domestic media during the two-day program organized by the National Tourist Organization (NTO).
Moric specified that it is solved with a large number of trees at the macro level.
“It’s not just the coast, there’s also the Skadar lake basin, and due to climate change, that belt is expanding and going further inland, so we could certainly have several million trees, and with that high number, it’s certainly possible to achieve all that what is required of modern agriculture, especially in terms of quality, quantity and continuity of olive oil supply“, said Moric, who is the vice dean for teaching at the Faculty of Tourism and Hotel Management.
The Moric farm has been organically certified for 15 years, and in addition to agricultural production and the processing of olives into olive oil, it also deals with tourism, that is, rural tourism, that is, agrotourism.
“We have about a thousand olive trees on six hectares. Some are centuries old, even over 300 years old. We are the first organic producers of olive oil in Montenegro. “Today we have a little more, three or four, but organic olive oil production is a great potential,” said Moric.
