Europe Allows Cooperatives in Spain to Regulate Supply

Spanish olive oil coop­er­a­tives have been given the green light to vol­un­tar­ily self-reg­u­late by the European Commission.

The move will allow mem­bers of Spain’s main agri­cul­tural coop­er­a­tive, Cooperativas Agro-ali­men­ta­rias, to with­draw sur­plus olive oil from the mar­ket dur­ing years in which pro­duc­tion out­strips demand and exports.

The announce­ment came after a meet­ing of European Union agri­cul­tural min­is­ters and will be for­mally cod­i­fied into the Common Market Organization (CMO) reg­u­la­tion of the E.U.’s pend­ing Common Agricultural Policy.

“Spain’s Cooperativas Agro-ali­men­ta­rias has obtained the approval of its pro­posal for vol­un­tary self-reg­u­la­tion in the olive oil sec­tor by the European Commission,” the coop­er­a­tive wrote in a state­ment on its web­site, adding that the deci­sion ​“would allow its mem­ber coop­er­a­tives to reach agree­ments for a prod­uct with­drawal from the mar­ket, pro­vided that the spe­cific cir­cum­stances of each cam­paign make it nec­es­sary.”

However, offi­cials from Cooperativas Agro-ali­men­ta­rias, which rep­re­sents 3,600 dif­fer­ent coop­er­a­tives and boasts more than one mil­lion mem­bers, hinted that the new rul­ing would not be a tool of first resort for coop­er­a­tives seek­ing to increase per­sis­tently low olive oil prices.

“The approved mech­a­nism could be acti­vated in those sur­plus cam­paigns, in which the prod­uct avail­abil­ity far exceeds the vol­ume of olive oil that is capa­ble of being absorbed, always attend­ing to the spe­cific mar­ket sit­u­a­tion at all times,” the coop­er­a­tive said.

Self-reg­u­la­tion was just one of sev­eral mea­sures intro­duced by Luis Planas, the Spanish min­is­ter of agri­cul­ture, at the meet­ing that are meant to sup­port olive oil pro­duc­ers.

The oth­ers included pro­mot­ing early har­vest­ing, increas­ing the amount of organic olive groves in the coun­try and improv­ing label­ing for tra­di­tion­ally-pro­duced oils.

• Cooperativas Agro-ali­men­ta­rias
• ABC