Poverty reduction is one of the top priorities either on the national or international level. A dynamic agriculture enhances labours productivity in the rural economy, increases wages and contributes to reducing absolute poverty. Thus growth in agri-food output remains important in integrating the rural poor into economic growth process and eventually reducing poverty. The value chain perspective provides an important mean to understand business-to-business relationships and creates new challenges and opportunities for reducing poverty. Though, the current study is concerned with shedding light on olives a promising crop in Egypt that faces great challenges and which require analyzing its value chain starting from input suppliers, up to producers, processors and consumers. In order to achieve the study's objectives, semi-structured interview was used, in addition to data records with two types of olive producers, a large-scale firm "Wadi Food" and small, medium scale North Coast farmers, beside some consumers and traders. The study results revealed that North Coast farmers are not fully incorporated within the value chain unlike the large firm; mainly they are olive producers with neither marketing vision and consumer preferences nor processing and packaging facilities even though they posses good potentials to carry on these activities. Additionally, the absence of an olive cultivation plan that takes into consideration the market, at least at the local level, will lead to declining cultivated areas year after year. The study provided some recommendations that require actions on 3 levels: the governmental level, farmers' level and private sector level.
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