This is pretty ambitious. But we’re here for it.

Ezz el-Din Abu Steit, Egypt’s  Minister of Agriculture and Land Reclamation, has said that Egypt is planning to be the world’s top table olive producer by the end of the next decade.

How?

According to Al-Monitor plans are underway to plan to plant 100 million olive trees in Egypt by 2022. That’s basically a tree for every Egyptian citizen, just to give you an idea. That’s a lot of trees.

Also, both Egyptian and foreign investors will have the chance to invest on the plots of land where the trees will be grown which include 25,000 acres in Matrouh and oases in the Western Desert and 10,000 acres in Upper Egypt’s West Minya.

Read: Five Things You Probably Didn’t Know About Olives

You might not be aware but Egypt is the second largest exporter and producer of table olives globally after Spain. According to recent figures, Egypt produced 450,000 tons of table olives in the 2018/19 crop year. But in that same vane, Egypt also imports 98% of its olive oil needs.

Doesn’t seem right, does it?

This basically became the catalyst for the projects, which aims for Egypt to become 100% self-sufficient in its olive oil needs. The project will also offer many job opportunities, strengthen the economy and help local agriculture and the environment by stopping desertification effects in the Nile River Delta.