Invasion of African oil, Spanish intensive crops, in addition to the EU’s mistakes, put Italian extra virgin olive oil at risk. Thus we lose 20% of production capacity
Hormuz reopened – in fits and starts -, they risk closing the oil mills: after the oil war, the (extra virgin?) oil war breaks out, which is upsetting the Italian countryside just a few weeks before the new harvest campaign and puts the credibility of Ursula von der Leyen at risk. The olive tree was delivered to men by Athena (or, if you like, by Minerva who stood out on the 100 lire coins: other eras, other happiness), goddess of wisdom, as the most precious of gifts because it gave light, medicine and nourishment. Genesis tells us how Noah realized that God’s wrath had ceased after the flood because the dove brought him an olive branch. Instead, today’s men, chasing money, are destroying age-old crops and cultures: from diet to Mediterranean peace. A rather forgotten text by Martin Heidegger, Abandonment, comes to mind to bring together the divine dimension of the olive tree and the utilitarian dimension of oil, meaning that much of our civilization – not just food – depends on that plant which has within itself the “kairos”, the good time, the time of quality.
And we must talk about abandonment, because Italy has its casualties in the oil war: 200 thousand hectares of olive groves abandoned, another 300 thousand in the process of being disposed of. It means a potential 20% of our production capacity. Added to which is the Xylella disaster which wiped out 22 million olive trees in Puglia, almost 40% of the production capacity of the Italian reservoir. They are all gifts from the EU which has never clarified the labels, which imports oil at zero duty from Tunisia – on its way to being the world’s leading producer -, which has allowed the Spanish to make an aggressive trade policy, which “gifted” us the killer bacterium because in the port of Rotterdam there are zero phytosanitary controls and the bacterium arrived with tropical plants.
The olive groves in Italy have been abandoned because with the hyper-intensive cultivation system Andalusia, La Mancha, where gangmastering reigns, have invaded Europe and the world with very low-priced oils. But it is a system that is collapsing and risks overwhelming even the parts of the Belpaese that remain anchored to traditional olive growing, opening the market doors to productions from non-European countries that dump because they pay a pittance for labor, like Tunisia.
The oil war is very ferocious. To understand it we need to start from the numbers. Italy is the country with the highest consumption of extra virgin olive oil: around 13 liters per person, but we have a production that is not enough, yet we export a lot of it. According to Ismea – the agency of the Ministry of Agriculture that monitors agri-food production, markets and consumption – we taste 750 thousand tons of olive oil for a total value of around 3 billion. But Unaprol – a national olive growing consortium with around one hundred thousand associated agricultural companies – claims that Italy produces around 234 million liters of extra virgin olive oil (it is the highest quality of vegetable oils extracted from drupes), a figure that could be revised downwards if there were stricter controls – compared to internal consumption of 461 million litres, an export of 318 million liters and an import of 545 million liters per year. There is something that doesn’t add up, especially if we take into account that in our oil mills there is a stock of extra virgin olive oil equal to 221 thousand tons (data at the end of May), of which approximately half is of Italian origin.
All this affects the price, which is no longer profitable, and the mills are closing one after the other. A very strong alarm came from Andria – one of the most important olive oil districts: 20 thousand hectares of olive groves and over 3 million plants – with Riccardo Guglielmi, coordinator of the national Agrocepi Frantoi department, who claims: «We have full silos, demand is being compressed on purpose to lower prices and let foreign oil in». A national mobilization by Coldiretti-Unaprol started right from Puglia, denouncing two phenomena: an invasion of foreign oil and a push towards counterfeiting. It is no coincidence that the battle cry is «Let’s stop the traffickers of extra virgin olive oil made in Italy». According to a study by Divulga – a think tank that deals with agricultural economics -, in the last year the price of the product has collapsed by 50%, going from around 9 euros per liter last year to current prices which do not go beyond 4.80 euros, while the costs borne by national producers have increased by over 200 euros per hectare. The reason – according to David Granieri, vice president of Coldiretti and president of Unaprol – lies in these factors: the mixing of extra virgin olive oil with heat-treated by-products which, by magic, become extra virgin, the arrival of zero duty oil from Tunisia, the triangulations that the Spaniards make with foreign oils which, lo and behold, become EU and even Italian. To stop all this, more controls, origin labels and more information on the market are needed.
On supermarket shelves you can find oils passed off as extra virgin for less than 5 euros per litre: the production cost in Italy for a real extra virgin cannot go below 11 euros. What oil is that on the shelf? Just turn the label to read “from EU non-EU olives”, but there are neither the percentages, nor the origins, nor the places and pressing systems. In Brussels there is no question of finally putting the sector under control. Ursula von der Leyen has two problems: the first not to displease the Spaniards, the second not to disappoint herself; you encouraged Tunisia to increase production by promising a growing absorption of oil by Europe. The commitment undertaken is to import one hundred thousand tons without duties. To get an idea, just stop and consider that an olive picker in Tunisia is paid 5 dollars a day – in Italy it doesn’t go below 80 euros per quintal which more or less corresponds to one day of harvesting – and that the cost of production in Africa doesn’t go beyond 1.80 euros per liter compared to a minimum of 9 euros in Italy.
Yet even Tunisia – we are the leading importer with around 67 thousand tonnes out of 260 thousand which is the overall export of the African country – is suffering from a drop in prices but, above all, from a scandal involving Abdelaziz Makhloufi, the main trader, who ended up under arrest, and Adel Ben Romdhane, the export boss who took refuge in Spain, who made a hole of 180 million euros. The result is that 300 Tunisian oil mills have gone bankrupt and that the national olive growing plan that has allowed the country to overtake Italy in production (450 thousand tons in Africa, around 300 thousand us) is suffering a setback even if they have already reached one and a half million hectares of olive trees.
But who benefits from these situations? Above all, the large Spanish groups have now no longer become producers, but global intermediaries of olive oil. Deoleo, the largest bottler in the world, has a turnover of 2 billion; Magasa, which “reigns” in Andalusia, exceeds 2 billion; Acesur pockets 1.4 billion; Borges 1.3 billion. The top twenty truly Italian brands combined do not reach 2 billion. It is the Spanish big names who set the price and direct the market, even to the detriment of homeland agriculture. The Assembly of Spanish olive-growing municipalities a week ago signed the Adamuz Declaration which reads: «With an average price of 3.51 euros per kilo, over 75% of the Spanish olive-growing area is at a loss. The cost of production in traditional olive groves varies between 5.3 euros per liter and 4.18 in the plains. In intensive olive groves and hedgerows the costs exceed 3.52 euros.” Bottom line, even Spain, which produces 1.4 million tons, risks losing out. Why? Because today oil is produced halfway around the world and the EU makes trade agreements where agriculture is only a commodity of exchange. Oh, by the way, extra virgin olive oil is the first ingredient of the Mediterranean diet, a UNESCO heritage site. But in Brussels they prefer margarine.
