Syria's Olive Oil Industry by the Numbers

Even after more than a decade of war, Syrian Olive Oil did $340 million in exports in 2024.

Few sectors better capture the scale of Syria’s reconstruction needs than olive oil. Before 2011, the sector supported an estimated 377,000 farming families, ranked Syria among the world’s six largest producers, and fed a domestic market where consumption was among the highest in the world—6.4 kg per capita in 2000. Like the rest of the country’s economy, though, Syria’s olive oil sector was devastated by the war. After 2011, production collapsed nearly 50% in three years, and, by 2018, 40% of Syria’s olive groves had fallen under Turkish military occupation. Domestic consumption plummeted to 2.6 kg per capita as displacement and poverty gutted domestic markets.

Vertically integrated industries like the olive oil sector, which link farmers to processors and exporters within a single domestic value chain, spur much of Syria’s productive economy. The ten figures that follow trace how war restructured the sector’s production and processing base, and identify the largest opportunities for recovery.

Figure #1: Conflict-Wrought Decline

Syria’s olive oil production trajectory reflects decades of deliberate state expansion followed by wartime collapse. Before 2011, production was rising by roughly 3,000–3,300 tons per year, driven by Ba’athist land reclamation policies that increased olive tree numbers from 38.6 million (1988) to 58.3 million (1997). Production peaked at 198,000 tons in 2011, placing Syria among the world’s 4th-6th largest producers.

The civil war reversed that trajectory: instead of continuing to grow, production began declining by about 3,000–3,600 tons annually after 2011. In effect, the war reduced the sector’s growth path by roughly 6,500–7,000 tons per year compared to the pre-war trend. In 2024, output totaled about 125 thousand tons, around 90 thousand tons less than the 210 thousand tons predicted by pre-war trajectories.

Figure #2: The Geography of Olive Production

Syrian olive cultivation concentrates in the country’s northwestern and coastal regions, where annual rainfall exceeds 350mm—the minimum threshold for rain-fed olive farming. Before the war, roughly 90% of production came from this climatically favorable area, which includes the governorates of Aleppo, Idlib, Latakia, and Tartous.

Within this zone, Afrin, in the northwestern Aleppo governorate, contained approximately 14 million olive trees before 2018—roughly 20% of Syria’s total. This single district produced an estimated 35,000–50,000 tons of olive oil annually, making it the country’s most productive olive-growing region.

In March 2018, Turkey and allied Syrian armed groups occupied Afrin following a military operation explicitly named “Olive Branch.” The occupation removed a significant portion of Syria’s olive-growing capacity from Damascus’ control, a geographic reality that shapes subsequent figures in this analysis.

Figure #3: The War’s Impact on Orchard Performance

Even before the war, Syrian olive yields were exceptionally low. In 2011, groves yielded just 1.6 tons of oil per hectare—far below traditional rain-fed systems elsewhere and a fraction of modern intensive operations. This poor performance likely reflects low tree density, limited fertilizer use, and a suboptimally dry climate, factors common to Syrian orchards.

The war devastated what production did exist. Yields collapsed from 1.6 tons per hectare (2011) to 0.56 tons (2014)—a 64% decline in three years—and have since remained unstable and depressed. Various mechanisms explain this drop. Syria’s rural population shrank by 50% between 2011 and 2016 as farmer displacement left groves untended and reduced incentives for efficient land use. International sanctions blocked fertilizer and pesticide imports, with only 40-50% of farmers having access to fertilizers by 2019. Agricultural extension services collapsed entirely. In Turkish-occupied Afrin after 2018, armed groups imposed fees of $4–15 per tree, plus crop taxation, encouraging the maximization of yield/tree rather than per hectare.

Reliable yield data has not been available since 2020, but drought continues to cause dramatic swings. The 2024–2025 season brought Syria’s worst drought in 60 years; in Daraa governorate alone, production fell 68%, with per-tree yields dropping by half.

Figure #4-5 A Rain-Dependent Sector

Syria’s olive sector relies almost entirely on rain-fed cultivation—95% of orchards depend on seasonal rainfall with no irrigation infrastructure. This contrasts with other producers: roughly a quarter of Spanish orchards use drip irrigation, while Tunisian and Moroccan farmers have also shifted toward irrigated intensive planting. Syria’s traditional extensive approach, with just 20-100 trees per hectare, produces lower volumes but higher-quality oil. Rain-fed olives yield a slightly higher oil content with flavor notes valued in premium markets.

That said, reliance on rain moreso reflects capital constraints than agronomic choice. Converting to drip irrigation can cost roughly $4,000 per hectare, capital most Syrian farmers, who operate small holdings under 5 hectares, do not have access to. In addition, using such infrastructure requires consistent access to electricity, which the Syrian grid cannot support.

Figure #6 The Loss of Processing Infrastructure

Another dimension of conflict-wrought decline, Syria’s olive pressing capacity has deteriorated sharply since 2009. The country lost 177 traditional presses—a 57% collapse. These traditional presses, while less efficient, remain accessible to smallholder farmers who cannot afford modern facilities’ processing fees. The loss of local pressing infrastructure has forced farmers to transport olives longer distances, increasing costs and reducing oil quality as fruit oxidizes during delays, while many surviving modern presses operate far below capacity due to intermittent power supply.

Figure #7: Routes Out

The sector’s uneven wartime trajectory can also be explained by the geographic concentration of presses in the northwest, where Aleppo (248), Idlib (120), Lattakia (143), and Tartus (236) form a dense processing corridor. This clustering is driven by two factors: processing follows olive cultivation, which is itself concentrated in the northwestern belt, and processors seek proximity to ports and border crossings to lower the cost of export. Yet that same concentration made the sector more vulnerable to shifts in territorial control in the northwest—particularly in and around Afrin and greater Aleppo—and left eastern regions dependent on long transport routes to access processing and export channels, vulnerabilities that intensified after 2018.

Figure #8: Syria Versus Regional Competitors

While Syria’s civil war destroyed its olive sector, its regional peers have largely increased capacity. Turkey invested heavily in processing capacity over two decades, with last year’s output reaching 475,000 tons, making it the world’s second-largest producer. Tunisia achieved similar gains: record harvests of 340,000 tons in 2024 have allowed the country to capture over 75% of EU olive oil imports from third countries, earning $923 million in export revenue over a 13-month period. In 2008, Syria, Turkey, and Tunisia produced comparable volumes, ranging from 125,000 to 160,000 tons. By 2024, each neighbor produced more than triple Syria’s diminished output.

Figure #9: Exports/Consumption/Production

For most of recent history, Syrian olive oil production has largely served high domestic demand, with a small export sector growing in the lead up to the 2011 Syrian revolution. Yet, even as production and domestic consumption remained depressed after 2011, export volumes have climbed steadily since 2014. The explanation largely lies with Turkey’s 2018 military operation seizing Afrin—home to 18 million olive trees producing 35,000-50,000 tons annually. Between 2018 and 2024, the region’s oil flowed through Turkish-controlled supply chains rather than Syrian government channels.

In 2023, Turkey imported $193 million worth of Syrian olive oil, representing 98% of Turkey’s total olive oil imports. Multiple investigations have documented how this oil would enter Turkey from Afrin, get repackaged or blended with Turkish oil, and enter international markets. As such, the pre-2025 relative export boom is unlikely to be durable. The reintegration of northern agricultural regions into the Southern-weighted domestic market and a general recovery in Syrian demand can be expected to reduce export rates.

Figure #10: Shifting destinations for Syrian Olive Oil

Syria’s olive oil export destinations reveal Turkey’s post 2018 control over the sector. In 2023, Turkey accounted for $356 million of Syria’s olive oil exports—62% of total export value—marking a dramatic shift from the pre-war period when European markets dominated. Between 2023 and 2024, exports, including Turkish ones, collapsed, likely reflecting both Syria’s September 2023 export ban, effective in regions under Damascus control, and Turkey’s own restrictions on bulk olive oil exports, which would have reduced demand for Afrin oil.

What Recovery Requires

If the above figures tell the story of an industry stunted by war, the past year of relative stability has brought hope of recovery. Territorial reunification promises to reconnect northern production zones with southern markets, while sanctions relief creates pathways for the foreign capital needed to rebuild processing capacity and irrigation systems. That said, the olive sector's structural challenges show that such political change alone does not guarantee economic revival.

Over 90% of Syrians remain below the poverty line, with public sector salaries averaging just $100-$120 monthly even after the transitional government’s wage increases. Prices of basic goods rose more than 50% in the first half of 2025 while purchasing power remains depressed: a 16-liter tin of olive oil costs workers two months’ wages in some regions. This broader economic fragility has kept domestic demand low, even amid a modest recovery in olive production.

Beyond weak consumer purchasing power, farmers largely lack access to capital to address chronic underinvestment. Replanting damaged orchards, rebuilding processing infrastructure, and integrating modern irrigation technology require financing that neither smallholders nor the transitional state can provide. While the government has attempted to facilitate investment via new, friendly financial codes, capital flows remain negligible in regions lacking territorial control and rule of law.

More fundamentally, effective property rights remain in question across much of Syria. A November 2025 report documented the most extreme manifestation of this governance vacuum: in Afrin, militias impose levies of $0.87-$8 per tree, seize entire harvests, and destroy orchards as punishment in a region that once produced one-third of Syria's olive oil.

Yet Syria retains inherent advantages: 69 million surviving olive trees, agro-climatic conditions that historically made it the world’s fourth-largest producer, and 377,000 farming families with generational expertise. The lifting of the Caesar act in December and new investment laws allowing 100% foreign ownership create pathways—if territorial stabilization follows, capital can flow to address irrigation deficits, processing gaps, and quality improvements that foreign markets demand. Recovery depends less on Syria's agronomic potential than on whether governance can finally deliver the security and attract the investment that the industry requires.