Uplifting Tunisian Olive Oil w/ Soraya Hosni
Soraya Hosni
Soraya Hosni is a French-Tunisian social entrepreneur, olive oil sommelier, farmer and environmental anthropologist. She speaks 8 languages and is as comfortable talking with North African olive farmers as she is with global leaders. Her innovative work to address systemic challenges and inequities in the olive oil supply chain led her to develop cultural, technical and economic solutions that benefit both farmers and the earth they farm on.
Tunisia is one of the world's largest producers of olive oil, yet most of it gets mixed with oil from Spain and other countries and sold under labels with an Italian sounding name. Olive trees in Tunisia are hundreds and sometimes thousands of years old, drought resistant, and typically raised free of chemicals. In this interview, Soraya shares about the many creative ways she has worked to uplift Tunisian olive oil to help return profits to farmers and preserve these heritage farming practices.
As with most social entrepreneurs, Soraya’s creativity and projects surpass the confines of one sector and one conversation. To learn more about the full breadth of her work check out The New Medina, a cultural heritage center she founded in Tunisia and @thenewmedina on Instagram. Clever Harvest is the agriculture tech company and system she started to help farmers coordinate their harvest, milling, and aggregation; this article gives a great overview of this work.
All photos below are from Soraya Hosni and The New Medina’s social media and website.
Over the past two years I invited Soraya to speak with students in the Regenerative Agriculture and Just Food Systems Lab course I teach at the Yale School of the Environment. She came to the university as a World Fellow, which is how we first met. You can see a few photos of the information she shared with us below. She also did an olive oil tasting with us which was such an amazing experience (see olive oil tasting photos in the slide show above)… I hope you all get to try this at some point in our lives as well.
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March 3, 2026
