Bar, Montenegro - November 2005 — Montenegro, with its 450,000 olive trees, used to be the main supplier of olive oil for the other republics of the former Yugoslavia. The wars and collapse of the former state in the 1990s, followed by economic sanctions and isolation, caused stagnation and decline of the Montenegrin olive industry. Without a viable marketing opportunity, the farmers lost interest in this production and stopped investing in either new equipment or new knowledge. For a decade, the orchards were not maintained well, harvesting was done manually by picking olives off the ground, and the products were sold individually in unlabeled containers.

IRD financed a series of projects to assist revitalization of the olive-oil production on the Montenegrin coast under USAID’s Community Revitalization through Democratic Action (CRDA) program. In 2002, IRD purchased mechanical harvesting equipment for the Olive Growers’ Association in Bar, which was virtually the only municipality at the time with existing olive oil production. The association, in turn, sold the equipment to its members under favorable terms, creating the revolving funds, which are still being used to procure additional equipment and thus enable olive growers in the Bar region to continuously increase their harvesting efficiency and sustainability.
In addition, the Olive Growers Associations from Bar received support in organizing one of traditional Bar olive fairs, “Maslinijada” 2003, as well as in equipping one the association’s offices. In cooperation with the Ministry of Agriculture, 2,000 olive seedlings were distributed to the olive growers from this region free of charge.

The purchase of the equipment and material was followed by the education of olive growers. The members of the Olive Growers Associations from Bar and Ulcinj attended two Olive Growers Conferences in Croatia, where they learned about new olive oil production trends and how this industry operates in some of the most developed European countries, including Italy and Spain. In addition, a young agricultural expert from Bar, Tatjana Perović, went on a study trip to Italy to learn about the newest insecticide technologies. When she returned, she trained local olive growers to control harmful pests without compromising the quality of products.

IRD also financed an olive-oil processing factory in Mrkojevići, the area of Bar famous for its olive orchards. Specialized equipment for the olive oil quality control, a gas chromatograph, was provided for the Center for Sub-Tropical Vegetation in Bar.

“As a result of USAID support over a couple of past years, it is estimated that the production of olives and olive oil in Bar has been almost tripled,” says the president of the Association of Olive Growers in Bar, Dragutin Martinović.

The successes achieved in Bar and Ulcinj encouraged the owners of the olive orchards in another part of the Montenegrin coast—the Boka Bay region—to consider revitalization of their orchards. At the time, more than three quarters of the 130,000 olive trees growing in this area were abandoned, not pruned for years, and overgrown by weeds and bushes. In response to this problem, IRD donated equipment needed to clean the orchards, such as chainsaws and grass-cutters, to the Association of Olive Growers in the Boka Bay as a first step to restart their long forgotten production. The association is also using the revolving funds model.

Montenegrin olive growers hope to continue harvesting economic rewards from this authentically Mediterranean agricultural product, and be able to praise themselves according to the old local saying “Be proud, as Bar is of its olive orchards.”