EU Helps Sustainable Growers in Spain, But US Tariffs on Table Olives Loom

Olive farm­ers in Andalusia are await­ing a €10.6m wind­fall from the region’s autonomous gov­ern­ment.

The Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Rural Development promised the money to olive pro­duc­ers in 2016 to help them imple­ment sus­tain­able agri­cul­tural tech­niques. According to Rodrigo Sanchez Haro, olive cul­ti­va­tion is an impor­tant part of Andalusia’s econ­omy and help­ing farm­ers, in turn, helps the rest of the econ­omy.

“What is good for the field is good for you,” Haro said. ​“Agricultural aid con­tributes to obtain­ing qual­ity pro­duc­tion, pro­tects the envi­ron­ment, guar­an­tees income lev­els and boosts (the econ­omy).”

Almost 8,000 olive grow­ers will pre­sum­ably ben­e­fit from the envi­ron­men­tal aid pack­age, which is aimed at pre­vent­ing ero­sion and soil degra­da­tion in olive groves as well as increas­ing the organic mat­ter con­tent of the soil.

The aid pack­age is part of a larger European Union ini­tia­tive to reward farm­ers for sus­tain­able prac­tices. The EU has already pro­vided more than €34m to the region for this pur­pose.

In 2016, more than 15,000 olive pro­duc­ers were recip­i­ents of the aid pack­age.

In order to receive the aid, olive pro­duc­ers must agree to fol­low a strict set of envi­ron­men­tal poli­cies for at least five years. These include replac­ing chem­i­cal-based fer­til­iz­ers with nat­ural ones and plant­ing native shrubs among olive groves.

According to Haro, 73 per­cent of these pro­posed poli­cies have already been achieved.

A spokesper­son from La Aceitera Jaenera, an Andalusian olive oil com­pany that works closely with local olive pro­duc­ers, said the major­ity of olive grow­ers in the autonomous com­mu­nity are receiv­ing the aid. This will help olive grow­ers man­age their costs for the upcom­ing har­vest.

“The aid is paid through the Junta de Andalucia, by the European Union to all olive farm­ers who meet the estab­lished require­ments, which is the major­ity,” the spokesper­son said. ​“Normally the aid is used by the farm­ers to pay the expenses of har­vest­ing; for the new har­vest that will start soon.”

For this and other rea­sons, the spokesper­son said that the aid will not affect olive oil prices.

Haro believes that the money will help the Andalusian olive indus­try at a time of uncer­tainty.

Meanwhile, the U.S. has pro­vi­sion­ally decided to impose new tar­iffs on Spanish table olive imports in order to pro­tect domes­tic pro­duc­tion in California. ​“The U.S. val­ues its rela­tion­ships with Spain, but even friendly coun­tries must play by the rules,” U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross report­edly said.

Europe claims that its sup­port to Spanish pro­duc­ers is con­sis­tent with World Trade Organization rules because it does not tar­get a sin­gle indus­try or prod­uct.

“We met with (gov­ern­ment offi­cials and local olive pro­duc­ers) to ana­lyze the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion and con­tinue with coor­di­nated actions in defense of the table olive sec­tor, the legal­ity of European aid received by the sec­tor, and the jobs it gen­er­ates,” Haro said.

“The clo­sure of the U.S. mar­ket for exports of Andalusian black olives is endan­ger­ing two mil­lion wages, 300 com­pa­nies and around 8,000 jobs, mainly in the region of the Sierra Sur de Sevilla.”

• Junta de Andaluc?a


• El Pais