€14.50 per liter, double last year! »

2024-01-07 10:44:37

” How am I going to do ? At my age, I’m not going to start cooking without olive oil! » Kaliopi Koundouri, 60, is worried. The surge in prices in Greece has forced her to halve her shopping over the past year: “I only buy the bare essentials, but olive oil is the bare essentials and if this continues I won’t be able to buy it anymore. » In this supermarket in the working-class district of Kypseli, in Athens, she calls on another woman who, like her, scrutinizes the prices in the oil aisle: “They are crazy: €14.50 per liter, double last year! »

This fever first affected Spain, the largest producer and consumer on the planet. At the end of November, the market price of extra-virgin oil rose to €8.19 per liter, an increase of 56% in one year. In supermarkets and hypermarkets, the liter even costs up to €13. The cause of this surge? Rising fixed costs (fuels, fertilizers, etc.) and the drought which, for two years, has weighed on the harvest. Result: with barely 665,000 tonnes during the 2022-2023 campaign, oil production fell by 56%.

These fluctuations are not entirely surprising. They are explained by the impact of climatic hazards on the yield of the crop and the alternation of years of high and low production, characteristic of the olive tree: left to its own devices, this fruit tree only produces one every other year. The collapse of Spanish production shook the global market, pushing up prices.

In Greece and Spain, the appearance of national drama

In both countries, the olive oil crisis is taking on the appearance of a national drama, as this ingredient occupies a central place in Mediterranean cuisine. In Greece, it is found everywhere: from salads to fried foods, including stews and mayonnaise. On the islands, children’s snacks consist of a slice of bread “spread” with olive oil, crushed tomatoes and a little salt. For Fotini, a producer in Crete, it is much more than a simple ingredient: “A symbol of life that dates back to Antiquity. »

The Greeks consume 11.3 liters of olive oil per year and the Spanish 12.5 liters. For comparison, the French are at 2.3 liters, according to the International Olive Council.

The main producers of olive oil in the Mediterranean / Visactu for La Croix

Olive oil is often the invisible link, a sort of umbilical cord that unites Greeks, living today in the city, to their village of origin. Maintaining this link is « vital », for Kostas Iliopoulos, 50, executive in a transport company. He got into the habit of returning to Messini, a village in the Peloponnese, the cradle of the family, to harvest the olive trees of his father and grandfather. “I then bring the oil back to my children who will soon accompany me to pick the fruit,” he confides.

But this year, the harvest was so bad that he didn’t make the trip: “I have a bottle left from last year. Once finished, I will have no choice but to buy some, but even the best one from the supermarket will not have the flavor of our oil. »

The Spanish also cannot imagine cooking with any other ingredient than their green gold. “ With butter ? », Marta, in her fifties, opens her eyes wide, faced with an almost incongruous question. “ What an idea ! Why use animal fat when we have so many olive trees! »

The misfortune of one makes the happiness of others

But the misfortune of some is the happiness of others, and more precisely of farmers in Portugal, the eighth largest producer in the world. Here too, olive oil is a key ingredient, especially during the holidays, to accompany cod. In supermarkets across the country, a bottle of a common brand is sold at €10 per liter today compared to €4.50 a year ago. “If we take into account the store’s margin, the cost of transport, packaging… olive oil at €4.50, it was really very poorly paid to the farmer,” analyzes Fernando Rosario of the agricultural cooperative of Beja and Brinches, which brings together nearly a thousand producers.

“Today, prices are fair,” estimates João Miguel Pereira at the head of Apabi, the association of olive oil producers from the interior Beira, a border region with Spain, between Porto and Lisbon, which brings together 7,000 olive growers, producing in a traditional way , without irrigation and mechanization, a very popular AOC oil.

Portugal benefits from modernization efforts

Portugal is also benefiting from modernization efforts that began around thirty years ago and which have accelerated over the last decade. In Alentejo, the large region in the south of the country, olive plantations have flourished thanks to the complex irrigation system of the Alqueva dam and its secondary dams. Fields of wheat and cork oaks have given way to olive groves, in intensive and super intensive.

“Thanks to irrigation we have not suffered from drought like Spain which lost 50% of its production. Today, our neighbors come here to buy olive oil which they will then resell,” observes Fernando Rosario who runs the agricultural cooperative of Beja and Brinches. Portugal is self-sufficient and exports 65% of its production in bulk.

Like the Portuguese, Spanish producers want to modernize their farms. “We need a strong support plan from the government which would include financial aidand the construction of infrastructure, such as water reserves, says Pedro Barato, president of the Interprofessional Association of Spanish Olive Oil. We must deploy watering systems with microdrops.»

Or how to adapt to climate change, the signs of which are multiplying. In mid-December in Greece, the thermometer fluctuated between 17 and 20 degrees. However, the olive tree needs cold in winter to regenerate. “It should be at most 10 degrees”, deplores Maria Pothou, producer whose harvest has fallen by a quarter this year. A hard blow for the woman who saw a large part of her olive trees go up in smoke in the terrible fires which devastated the Peloponnese in 2007.

Fires ravaged part of Greece again in the summer of 2023 and were followed by apocalyptic floods. Around 80% of the 250,000 olive trees in Thrace, in the northeast of the country, burned. Valia Kelidou did the math: in the family olive grove, Kyklopas, located near the port city of Alexandroupoli, 2,000 trees (out of 13,000) burned.

“We will see in the spring the extent of the catastrophe, she explains. An old olive tree can burn very quickly because the fire lodges in its cavities and burns everything down to the roots. But a young person can survive. »
Valia fears that the species she cultivated, the Makri olive, will now be condemned. “And we are waiting to know how we are going to be compensatedshe says thoughtfully. For the 300 local families who lived on olives, the recovery will be difficult. »