Concerns Over Shortages of Olive Oil in Italy Mount

Andrea Carassi, direc­tor gen­eral of the Italian Association of the Edible Oil Industry (Assitol), has warned that Italy is fac­ing an olive oil short­age greater than any seen in over a gen­er­a­tion.

His com­ments come amid a string of dis­ap­point­ing har­vest fore­casts across the Mediterranean basin.

Growers in Spain, the world’s largest olive oil pro­ducer, pre­dict a 50 per­cent decline in pro­duc­tion. Meanwhile, author­i­ties in Tunisia, Italy and Portugal also antic­i­pate sig­nif­i­cant pro­duc­tion decreases this year.

“We had spo­ken of a hot autumn for olive oil in early September. Unfortunately, we were not wrong,” Carassi told Il Sole 24 Ore. ​“The dis­pro­por­tion between con­sump­tion and pro­duc­tion is such that, between now and next sum­mer, we may not have enough oil for the shelves of large retail­ers.”

The Italian domes­tic mar­ket accounts for approx­i­mately 600,000 tons of extra vir­gin olive oil sales each sea­son. However, recent esti­mates pre­dict that only a third of this will be pro­vided, owing to a series of cat­a­strophic cli­mate events rang­ing from storms to drought.

Soaring energy prices have fur­ther com­pli­cated the sit­u­a­tion, increas­ing pro­duc­tion costs and prompt­ing calls for sub­si­dies for pro­duc­ers and con­sumers alike.

However, Carassi sees a dan­ger in arti­fi­cially low­er­ing prices. He said this could lead to an even ear­lier deple­tion of stock and that ​“at a time when olive oil is becom­ing a rare com­mod­ity, we believe that it is advis­able to avoid con­tin­u­ous recourse to pro­mo­tions which would dam­age con­sumer con­fi­dence in the entire olive oil sec­tor, and debase the value of our efforts.”

This will do lit­tle to allay the fears of con­sumers, how­ever. Italy’s National Confederation of Independent Farmers (Coldiretti) warned that extra vir­gin olive oil might reach a record retail price of €10 per liter as every part of the sup­ply chain, from pro­duc­tion and pack­ag­ing to label­ing and trans­port, is bur­dened by cost increases of 30 to 170 per­cent.

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