The history of Espejo, a municipality southeast of Córdoba, is impressive. There the Battle of Munda took place, which pitted the troops of Julius Caesar and Pompey and decided the fate of Rome. And during another much more recent civil war, the Spanish one, Robert Capa and Gerda Taro took the iconic photo Death of a militiaman in this Andalusian town, illuminating modern reporting. The olive trees that have been cultivated in the area for more than two thousand years witnessed these momentous events, but now it is this tree that is the protagonist of an exceptional situation with important economic and social repercussions.
The drought of the last two years and the heat have put olive oil production throughout Spain and in Andalusia, as the main source, in particular, to the limit. The result is well known: prices at source have exceeded eight euros per kilo this summer, a historical record, and the extra virgin liter bottle is paid for more than ten euros in the supermarket, 67% above the value of a year ago. The name liquid gold has never been so accurate.
The new olive harvest campaign that is just starting now is not looking much better. You just have to explore the sea of ??olive trees that extends through Córdoba, Jaén or Granada to see it. From a bird’s eye view, from the top of the Espejo castle, property of the Dukes of Osuna, brown veins can be seen instead of the intense green that the olive trees should look for these dates. Already at the foot of the crop we find the reason: some of the trees have dry leaves and some barely have fruits hanging or they are very small, almost a bone covered with a thin layer of skin, when they should be full.
“I have never seen anything like this, two short harvests in a row, this drought, and I have been doing this for more than fifty years,” says José, a resident of Espejo and a small olive tree owner. If last year he collected just over 6,000 kilos of olives, he hopes to obtain about a thousand. “What good is it to me that the oil is paid at eight euros with so little production,” he adds. The costs – electricity, fuel, fertilizers… – have increased by 150%, the same as the price of oil has increased in the last two years.
The Ministry of Agriculture foresees a production of 765,000 tons of oil this season in Spain, 15% higher than last, although the stock of stocks is much lower, just over 200,000 tons, so the total availability of the food is estimated down. Compared to the average of the last five years, the drop reaches 34.4%. Andalusia alone concentrates 72% of all national production and this campaign will contribute some 550,600 tons, 7% above the previous one but still 40.1% less than usual. Extremadura, Castilla-la Mancha, Aragón and the Valencian Community will greatly exceed the records from a year ago, although their total weight is modest. Catalonia, for its part, will be the most affected, with a decrease in production of 20% compared to last season and 60% compared to the average for the last five years. Therefore, there is nothing to predict that the final price of this central food in the Mediterranean diet will drop substantially in the coming months.
What has happened in the olive groves? “It hasn’t just been the drought,” responds Pablo Ortiz, manager of the San Isidro de Espejo cooperative, belonging to the DCoop group, Europe’s leading olive oil producer as a result of the merger of Cordoliva and Hojiblanca. “The olive tree only blooms once a year, in spring; In April and May of this year it was so hot, with temperatures of almost 40 degrees, that a large amount of flower was burned,” he continues. Added to the decline in flowering caused by this unprecedented heat wave was the persistent drought. The quality of olive oil in the cooperatives of this municipality remains excellent, above average. But all the oil mills have seen production drop progressively, as is happening throughout the territory. “We usually collect about 23 million kilos of olives per season, we have reached 32 in the best years, but in the last season we dropped to ten million kilos,” summarizes Ortiz. And they can still be satisfied, he acknowledges. In cooperatives in neighboring towns they barely reach 20% of usual production.
San Isidro is a typical cooperative, although one of the oldest, in the olive-growing area of ??Andalusia. It was established in 1960 to confront an injustice. At that time the mills that ground the olives were in private hands, some of them owned by landowners. They took advantage of the circumstances of small farmers, until they said enough was enough. The farmers were aware that the owners of the mills were trying to deceive them, they were not paid what they had to pay for the olives they collected, and they decided to join forces to build their own mill and oil mill. Those greedy owners were left without raw materials while San Isidro now has 5,000 hectares of cultivation, 95% of the Picual variety, with a turnover of about 13 million euros in seasons without drought. Most of its 1,030 members are small and medium-sized owners for whom the olive grove is a secondary source of income. “Years ago a family could live with a five-hectare plot, but today it is impossible,” says Alfonso, a member of the cooperative. Almost all of them combine oil production with jobs in construction or the service sector.
It is difficult to find in this Cordoban municipality of 3,300 inhabitants a person who is not linked to the olive grove. Despite the difficulties that the lack of rain and the increase in costs have brought, olive trees continue to constitute the main economic activity in the area, says the mayor of Espejo, Florentino Santos, of the PSOE – in the town, perhaps because of its past. Collectively, the socialists or IU have always governed. “The olive campaigns are temporary, but the municipality lives on this all year round; “Whoever does not have a plot does labor work, it has an impact on the restoration, on the construction… everything is linked to the evolution of the olive grove,” says Santos, who advocates for a more stable pricing system.
Decades ago, agricultural production was more diversified in this territory, with part of cereal and vineyards. Over time these crops were abandoned and they opted for olive groves, which were more profitable. Until climate change, with Spain on the front line of fire, became evident. With a majority of dryland production – 60% of Spanish olive trees – some farmers have even given up harvesting olives this year because the accounts are not working out. This is the case of the mayor himself, with a small plot of family origin.
The economic impact of the decline of the olive grove in Andalusia is not minor. The olive campaign produced 3,567.15 million euros in 2021, while in 2022, already with the lack of rain and the decrease in production, it fell to 2,860 million euros despite the increase in prices, according to data from the Junta de Andalucía.
This exceptional situation, with little raw material at skyrocketing prices, has turned oil into a highly coveted product by thieves. The Civil Guard has reinforced its forces, will monitor with drones and will always demand the traceability certificate of the oil from the transporters – where that oil comes from and what its destination is – to try to avoid thefts like the one that occurred a few weeks ago in Carcabuey, also In cordoba. The thieves took 56,000 kilos of extra virgin oil valued at half a million euros. In Espejo, the three existing cooperatives – San Isidro, San Bartolomé and Virgen de la Oliva – and the city council launched a surveillance service called “rural daycare” three years ago that has helped reduce thefts. “Since then there have hardly been any incidents,” explains Floren Reyes, from the San Bartolomé cooperative. A farmer from the town remembers how about four years ago, before the pandemic, 3,500 kilos of olives were stolen from his plot in a single night. “The thieves were well informed because that year my olives had a very high yield.” This campaign will be more vigilant than ever.
Farmers are not just crossing their fingers waiting for it to rain and temperatures to normalize – the olive grove needs a period of cold to regenerate. They try to anticipate the evolution of the climate by optimizing production, with the introduction of new, more profitable types of olive cultivation. Mara Notario, agricultural technician in San Isidro, highlights here the increase in super-intensive olive groves that is advancing in the province of Córdoba, “even in dry lands.” This technique allows for better use of the land, with a greater density of trees per square meter. “In a normal year, the traditional olive grove has a cost of three euros per liter of oil produced, while in the super-intensive year the cost is reduced to 1.4 euros on average,” emphasizes Tomás García Azcárate, an expert in agricultural policy at the CSIC. . Now, this cultivation involves a change of variety. “It works with the arbequina and the arbosana, smaller olive trees, in a hedge instead of a tree, which can be harvested with the harvester, thereby reducing the need for labor,” explains Notario. Around 20% of the olive grove is already super-intensive and is increasing, which will profoundly modify the landscape. “It is not an ornamental tree, it is a crop,” they defend in the sector. The deficit irrigation system and the promotion of regenerated water or water from a desalination plant is also seen as a possibility for the future.
With these improvements they try to restore the activity’s profitability and attractiveness to reverse the lack of generational change that plagues the farms. The average age of members in many cooperatives is over 50 or 60 years old. “This is causing an incipient process of concentration of hectares in the hands of investors and large corporations, which buy or lease plots,” says Cristóbal Cano, responsible for the olive grove in the UPA agricultural union.
But first of all, small and medium-sized owners need water as soon as possible. If it rains in the coming weeks, before the peak of the harvest, the olives will be able to regain some weight. How much they depend on the sky is demonstrated by the cry of joy that some emitted last Wednesday in Espejo, when it began to rain unexpectedly heavily. Liquid gold is no longer just oil, now it is also water.
