Let Them Use Sunflower Oil

By Paul Homewood

h/t Paul Kolk

Francisco José García de Zúñiga is looking across one of the fields of olive trees that he farms. It’s harvest time, and the hum of the machine used to shake the trees as workers beat the olives off their branches can be heard in the distance.

"This is turning out to be another bad year, to put it mildly," he said. "We’ve had two years of drought in a row, 2022 and 2023, and two years of bad harvests."

Mr García de Zúñiga’s land is in Jaén, the southern inland province that is the heart of Spanish olive oil output.

Spain is the world’s biggest olive oil producer, covering 70% of European Union consumption and 45% of that of the entire world.

The lack of rain that this province and other olive-producing areas around Spain have been seeing therefore has an enormous impact on both the amount of oil being produced and its price.

"When Spain has problems, that creates problems for global production," Mr García de Zúñiga said. "If the world supply is lower because Spain is producing less and the demand remains the same, the price goes up – it’s the law of supply and demand."

Cristóbal Gallego Martínez, the president of the cooperative, says that increases in fuel, electricity and fertiliser costs over the last two years have contributed to the rise in the price of olive oil. However, he says the lack of rain is the biggest factor.

"We have a Mediterranean climate, which tends to have dry periods, periods of heavy rain and then intermediate spells," he said. "Right now we’re in a dry period and it’s lasting a long time."

Climate change means traditional assumptions that a poor harvest would be followed by a good one are no longer safe, particularly given that, according to a UN environment programme report, temperatures in the Mediterranean region are rising 20% faster than the global average.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-67565503

Meanwhile back in the real world, olive production in Spain has been at record highs in recent highs. As the man says, Spain often has dry years.

Olive production has always veered from good to bad and back again. The swings appear larger because output is larger. But in percentage terms little has changed. In 1983, for instance, output fell from 3.3 to 1.3 million tonnes, a drop of 60%, which far exceeds anything recently:

https://www.fao.org/faostat/en/#compare

It is also worth noting that the area harvested has risen by a quarter since 1981, presumably because of rising demand and, I would guess, EU subsidies.

Almost inevitably this newly planted land is much less productive and much more exposed to the effects of drought. After all, the most productive land will have been harvested already.

This means that harvest will be more volatile than in the past.