Olive growing in İzmir

Olive groves are spread from the north of İzmir to its south. The source names Bergama, Dikili, Menemen, Kemalpaşa, Torbalı, Ödemiş and Selçuk as growing areas. In the north the Bergama-Dikili line continues the oil-olive belt of the northern Aegean; in the south Selçuk and Torbalı join the olive lands of the Küçük Menderes basin.

The province also falls under the Kuzey Ege Zeytinyağları geographical indication, registered by Tariş, which covers İzmir together with the northern Aegean.

İzmir raised its tree count by 11.9% over eleven years (16.2 → 18.2 million bearing trees). But the real change is in yield, not tree numbers: 12 kg per tree in 2014-15 became 26.7 kg in 2024-25 — more than double the crop from a similar number of trees.

İzmir is distinctly an oil province: only 9% of the 2024-25 crop went to table use, the rest to oil. The extraction rate is 6.2 — on average 6.2 kg of olives per kilo of oil, a ratio that varies with variety and ripeness.

The striking feature of the series is its swing: 53,441 t in the worst season against 485,275 t in the best. A ninefold gap shows how sharply the olive's inherent alternate bearing can play out at provincial scale.