Olive trees grow primarily in Mediterranean climates, with over 60% of the world’s production concentrated in just three countries: Spain, Greece, and Italy. But olive cultivation has spread well beyond its ancient roots, reaching every inhabited continent where warm, dry summers and mild winters create the right conditions.
The Mediterranean Heartland
The Mediterranean Basin is where olive trees originated and where they still dominate global production. Spain leads the world by a wide margin, producing roughly 8.1 million tonnes of olives annually and accounting for nearly 70% of all EU olive oil output. Greece follows at about 3 million tonnes, then Italy at 2.2 million tonnes. Together, these three countries produce approximately 61% of the world’s olives.
Portugal rounds out Western Europe’s contribution at around 735,000 tonnes per year and has been steadily increasing its output, with an estimated 175,000 tonnes of olive oil in the 2024/25 season. Across the Mediterranean’s southern shore, Tunisia (2 million tonnes), Morocco (1.4 million), Algeria (1.08 million), and Egypt (968,000 tonnes) are all major producers. Turkey contributes about 1.3 million tonnes, and Syria historically produced over 780,000 tonnes before its civil conflict disrupted farming.
Wild olive trees originally grew in a narrow band along Mediterranean coastlines, with the western coast of Turkey (Anatolia) serving as both a natural range and a refugium where the species survived ice ages. Through thousands of years of domestication, the cultivated olive expanded from those limited coastal zones into broader climates, higher elevations, and more northern latitudes than wild olives could naturally reach.
What Olive Trees Need to Thrive
Olive trees are adapted to a specific set of conditions, which explains why they cluster in certain latitudes. They need hot, dry summers and cool (but not freezing) winters. Crucially, they require about two months of temperatures between 40 and 50°F (4 to 10°C) to trigger flowering. Without that chill period, the trees won’t produce fruit reliably.
In terms of cold hardiness, olives grow best in USDA zones 8 through 10, though some cold-hardy cultivars can survive in zones 7a and 7b. Sustained freezes below about 15°F can kill branches or entire trees, which is why commercial olive farming doesn’t extend into most of the continental interior of Europe or North America.
Soil matters less than you might expect. Olive trees are hardy and tolerate lower nutrient levels than most fruit trees. They do best in well-draining soil with a pH between 6.5 and 7.5. Loamy and sandy soils work well because they drain quickly. Clay soil, which holds water, can cause root problems. Waterlogged roots are one of the fastest ways to kill an olive tree, which is why groves are often planted on slopes or hillsides where water runs off naturally.
Olives in the United States
California produces more than 95% of the olives grown in the U.S., with the planted area hovering between 30,000 and 40,000 acres since 1980. In 2021, California’s 36,000 bearing acres yielded about 101,000 tons of olives, valued at $85 million. The state’s Central Valley, with its hot summers and mild winters, provides ideal Mediterranean-type conditions. Smaller plantings exist in Arizona, Texas, Georgia, and parts of the Southeast, but none approach California’s scale.
Southern Hemisphere Production
Olive cultivation has expanded significantly south of the equator over recent decades. Argentina leads the Southern Hemisphere with roughly 110,000 hectares under cultivation, concentrated in the central-western and northwestern regions that border the Andes between about 27° and 33° south latitude. Peru follows with approximately 28,000 hectares, focused more on table olives than oil. Chile ranks third in South America with about 24,000 hectares of olive orchards.
Australia has built a substantial industry, with around 11 million olive trees spread across 35,000 hectares. Uruguay and Brazil are newer entrants, with 10,000 and 1,300 hectares respectively.
Growing olives in the Southern Hemisphere creates some interesting differences from the Mediterranean. In parts of Argentina and Australia, higher early-season temperatures push the timing of oil development earlier, so that most oil accumulates during summer heat rather than the cooler autumn conditions typical around the Mediterranean. In northwestern Argentina, warm winters and springs lead to earlier flowering and earlier harvests. Table olives in some Argentine regions are harvested in mid-summer, when evaporation is high and rainfall is scarce, which affects irrigation demands considerably.
How Climate Change Is Shifting the Map
The geography of olive growing is not static. Modeling research in Turkey projects a significant northward shift in suitable olive-growing areas under warming climate scenarios. Regions along the Black Sea and Marmara coasts, previously too cool for olive cultivation, are becoming increasingly favorable. At the same time, traditional growing areas along the southern Mediterranean and Aegean coasts are losing suitability as temperatures rise and rainfall patterns change.
The pattern is consistent across different warming scenarios: zones rated “very high suitability” are shrinking, while moderate and low-suitability zones are expanding into higher latitudes and elevations. This means olive groves may gradually move uphill and northward, a trend already being observed in parts of southern Europe. For growers, this creates both opportunity in new regions and risk in established ones, particularly where drought and extreme heat are intensifying. Italy’s 2024/25 olive oil production, for instance, dropped to an estimated 200,000 tonnes partly due to drought and heatwaves in the country’s south, combined with the natural alternate-bearing cycle of the trees.
Globally, the EU still accounts for over 60% of world olive oil production. After two consecutive short harvests driven by extreme weather, the EU’s 2024/25 season was expected to rebound to around 1.95 million tonnes on better flowering conditions and a milder summer. That volatility underscores how tightly olive production remains tied to climate, even in the regions where these trees have grown for millennia.