Madrid
Brígida Jiménez Herrera owns a small 30 hectare plantation in Jaén, Andalusia. It produces olive oil, but has not seen the color of the Picual olives since the year before last. Due to a lack of rain, Europe is facing the biggest olive oil crisis of the last decade.
Spain, which accounts for 45% of the world’s total olive oil, saw its production fall from 1.4 million tons (about 1.5 billion liters) in 2022 to less than half, 660,000 (or 719 million liters), in this year (the forecast). is slightly higher in recent months, according to the International Olive Council. “I hope it still rains so we can salvage something from this harvest,” says Herrera
“Last year I didn’t harvest anything. Not this year either. That’s why the price of olive oil is going up,” she says. “The producers lose, who sell almost nothing, the traders lose, who cannot increase enough to make a profit, and the consumers lose, who are already suffering from general price increases in food and also olive oil.”
According to a survey by the Spanish Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, for 100 kg of extra olive oil in 2020, the original price received by the producer when selling to traders was €202 (R$1,058). In the following two years it increased by more than 50%, to €331 in 2021 and to €335 (R$1,755) in 2022.
However, no one was prepared for this year’s surge, which more than tripled prices compared to 2020. Today, 100 kg sold by producers costs €615 (R$3,222). “But nobody gets rich here. On the contrary,” he says.
It turns out that Brígida Jiménez Herrera is not only a small producer, but also the director of the government agency Ifapa (Andalusian Institute for Research and Training in Agriculture, Fisheries, Food and Organic Production) in the Córdoba region of olive groves in Andalusia, the autonomous community that produces the majority of Spain’s olive oil and brings together 180,000 olive growers.
Therefore, she also has a vision of what the country will do to mitigate this crisis. “The limiting factor is the climate,” he says. “Pluviometry, which used to be 700 mm or even 1,000 mm in mountainous regions, has fallen to 300 mm to 450 mm in the last year.”
Herrera cannot say whether climate change on the planet is responsible for the current situation. “I am not an expert in this field, but it is clear that as temperatures rise there are changes in crops. The fact is that crises like this happen sometimes. We had another crisis like this in 2012 and 2013,” she remembers.
The cost of growing olives in Spain is about €1,000 (R$5,238) per hectare per year. In their case, which covers 30 hectares, last year the costs were €30,000 (R$157,000) and now another €30,000, with the monetary outlay being zero.
When asked about a possible domino bankruptcy of producers in the region, she replied that this has not happened yet. “Firstly, the farmer has an extremely conservative profile. He never spends everything he earned in the previous harvest on the next harvest. It saves money for situations like this, which can always happen,” replies Herrera.
And there is also help from the European Union, which has an aid program for struggling farmers. “The EU is helping with 300 euros, up to 400 euros per hectare, to maintain the production chain all the people who depend on the harvest, from workers to farmers and their families,” he says.