The drought has caused the region’s water reservoirs to dwindle, and authorities have restricted the irrigation on which many groves depend. “The problem is that we had several consecutive dry years, not just one.” “There have been many dry years in Spain,” says Luca Testi, a researcher at the Institute of Sustainable Agriculture at the Spanish National Research Council. It wasn’t the intensity of the drought as much as its duration that posed problems for olive trees, because water scarcity has more of an effect than high heat. In Andalusia, the olive farmers’ plight follows a two-year drought combined with record-breaking heat waves. “And climate projections say that the intensity and length of these phenomena will increase.” At the same time, rainfall is projected to decrease in the region-and what does fall will come in heavy storms that trigger flash floods, which are less effective at restoring water levels across a growing season. “This translates into an increase in the intensity and frequency of extreme events, like drought, floods, windstorms and heat waves,” Magno says. And according to a European Union study, temperatures in northern Morocco, southern Spain and northern Italy reached peaks of 2.5 to four degrees C above the 1991–2020 baseline between May 2022 and April 2023. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, temperatures across the world are now 1.1 degrees Celsius higher on average, compared with preindustrial times, and in the Mediterranean they are 1.5 degrees C higher. “The Mediterranean basin is a hotspot of climate change,” says Ramona Magno, a researcher at the Italian National Research Council. In areas of North Africa, heat waves and droughts have also threatened the production of certain fruit trees. “This year, if we reach 30,000, I think we’ll pop a good bottle.” And in other parts of Italy, farmer associations have said that heat waves, floods and hailstones the size of clementines damaged local melon, watermelon, cherry and wine grape crops. “Sicily normally produces 50,000 tons of olive oil per year,” says Mario Terrasi of the Oleum Sicilia cooperative. In Sicily, olive oil producers say unseasonal rainfall and cold weather will halve their output. Elsewhere in Spain, extreme weather events devastated melon, watermelon and citrus crops. “We don’t know what’s going to happen,” he adds.Īndalusia’s drought and heat waves are among several climate stressors to hit farmers across the Mediterranean this summer. Although demand for olive oil remains strong, he says, retail prices can lag three to six months behind raw material prices. “Current prices are more than double the maximum price we saw in the last 23 years,” says Álvaro Díaz de Lope, deputy director of Dcoop, Spain’s leading olive cooperative. Until recently, price increases were held under some control by carryover oil that producers had from the previous year. Retail prices vary but, of course, are higher. According to the International Olive Oil Council, the average wholesale price of one kilogram of extra virgin olive oil in Spain, Italy and Greece-which together provide more than 60 percent of the world’s supply-was between €7.35 ($7.95) and €9.00 ($9.71). The 2022 shortage raised olive oil prices worldwide, and prices today are already at the highest levels in decades. Something like this had never happened in our industry.” “Usually after a bad harvest came a good harvest, and after a good one, a bad one. Without a lot of rain, and soon, the current drought and heat will knock the 2023 harvest down to similar levels-and global stocks will dwindle. In 2022 the country’s production was around half of its recent average. What happens in Spain affects olive oil markets worldwide. By some estimates, Andalusia accounts for the majority of the country’s output. Spain is the world’s largest olive oil producer, accounting for nearly half of global production. Unless autumn brings early and heavy rainfall, Cano says, “I will maybe have 10 percent of my normal yield.” He is secretary-general of the region’s small farmers union, and members have sent him photographs of trees with leaves that have folded and turned brown and olives that have withered. But this summer, Cristóbal Cano’s groves-25 acres in the city of Alcalá la Real near Granada, Spain-look light and nearly empty, as if the trees have already been harvested.Ĭano, like thousands of other producers in Andalusia, has battled two years of drought and high temperatures. As summer winds down in the verdant olive groves across southern Spain’s region of Andalusia, the tree branches typically bend down, heavy with ripening fruits.
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