200,000 Olive Farms in Spain Could Vanish in Next Decade, Report Finds

A study released by multi­na­tional firm Deoleo warned that 240,000 small olive oil farms in Spain could van­ish over the next 10 years.

The inter­na­tional com­pe­ti­tion in the olive oil sec­tor, which inevitably leads to more olive oil pro­duced glob­ally, in con­junc­tion with a rel­a­tive fall in con­sump­tion and the stag­na­tion of prices in the coun­try, makes it hard for small Spanish pro­duc­ers to retain their posi­tion in the mar­ket.

The study, enti­tled ​“Salvemos el buen aceite” or ​“Save the good oil,” focused on the main olive oil pro­duc­ing ter­ri­to­ries of Spain – Andalusia, Castilla — La Mancha, València, Aragón and Catalonia – and found that more than 320,000 acres of tra­di­tional olive tree farm­ing have already been aban­doned in these areas.

The expla­na­tion for the decline lies in num­bers, with 64 olive oil pro­duc­ing coun­tries in the world today, com­pared to 46 coun­tries fif­teen years ago. A total of 28.7 mil­lion acres of land are cov­ered with olive trees, and every sec­ond there are, on aver­age, 10 olive trees being planted some­where on the planet.

Furthermore, almost 40 per­cent of the total quan­tity of olive oil comes from inten­sive farm­ing, which yields almost 50 per­cent more than tra­di­tional farm­ing at half the cost.

This expan­sion of cul­ti­vated land and olive oil out­put cre­ates an imbal­ance between sup­ply and demand at a global level, with more olive oil being pro­duced than con­sumed.

While over­all global con­sump­tion has increased by 6.4 per­cent dur­ing the last nine years, the study stated, a cut­back has occurred in mature mar­kets such as Spain, Italy and Greece, where con­sumers have reduced their intake of olive oil by 16 per­cent on aver­age trans­lat­ing to 286,000 tons col­lec­tively.

Meanwhile, increases in con­sump­tion in other mar­kets, such as Germany, France and the United States, have slowed down over the same time period.

In that sense, an esti­mated sur­plus in olive oil pro­duc­tion of one to two mil­lion tons each year will lead to lower prices in most mar­kets, includ­ing Spain, where prices today are below all the other pro­ducer coun­tries world­wide.

Prices of olive oil demon­strate a neg­a­tive out­look in the recent weeks in Spain set­tling at €2.20 ($2.49) per kilo­gram of extra vir­gin, with the agri­cul­tural orga­ni­za­tion COAG warn­ing that these prices are already below the prof­itabil­ity thresh­old.

With the cur­rent trend of loss in con­sump­tion, the small mar­gin for profit and the expan­sion of olive tree cul­ti­va­tion world­wide, tra­di­tional Spanish olive groves could become unsus­tain­able and lose another 1.2 mil­lion acres within a decade, the study con­cluded, rep­re­sent­ing 20 per­cent of all Spanish olive groves.

The loss would affect 240,000 small farm­ers with 2.5 to 7.5 acres of land, dri­ving them out of exis­tence, the study warned. Almost 300,000 local fam­i­lies who are one way or another asso­ci­ated with the olive oil sec­tor would be impacted.

The need for pro­duc­ers to yield more olive oil in order to stay com­pet­i­tive poses another threat to the tra­di­tional Spanish olive oil sec­tor. There is a lot of pres­sure for these smaller pro­duc­ers to switch to fully mech­a­nized, inten­sive cul­ti­va­tion meth­ods of high per­for­mance but low qual­ity, which are not suit­able for small tra­di­tional farms with big, irreg­u­larly planted olive trees.

The sit­u­a­tion mainly affects the native olive vari­eties of Spain, espe­cially the Picual vari­ety, which falls vic­tim to inten­sive olive farm­ing. Intensive farms tend to cul­ti­vate other vari­eties, which are selected for their higher out­put and not for their antiox­i­dant prop­er­ties and rich organolep­tic char­ac­ter­is­tics, like Picual is.

Even worse, the envi­ron­men­tal ben­e­fits tra­di­tional olive orchards offer, such as pre­serv­ing the land from deser­ti­fi­ca­tion and absorb­ing large amounts of car­bon diox­ide, are now gone due to the age and size of the trees, since inten­sive farm­ing mainly uses younger and smaller trees with less foliage and shorter roots.

Juan Vilar, the author of the study and an expert on the olive oil sec­tor of Spain, called for col­lec­tive action to pre­vent fur­ther dam­age.

“It is pos­si­ble and nec­es­sary to reverse the sit­u­a­tion, it takes the com­mit­ment of the agents of the sec­tor to main­tain a type of olive grove that has an impor­tant social, eco­nomic and envi­ron­men­tal role, which is typ­i­cally Spanish and which, due to its unique­ness, pro­vides a huge rich­ness and vari­ety to the offer of olive oil,” he said.

Eventually, it comes down to prices of olive oil increas­ing in the coun­try to pre­vent the aban­don­ment of tra­di­tional olive orchards in the com­ing years, the study sug­gested.

In the long run, the trans­for­ma­tion of the Spanish olive grove from tra­di­tional to mod­ern for bet­ter yield in terms of quan­tity could back­fire and apart from the envi­ron­men­tal reper­cus­sions could lead to the dis­ap­pear­ance of Spanish indige­nous olive vari­eties.

• Europa Press


• El Periodico