The concentration of history in Espejo, a municipality in the southeast of Córdoba, impresses. The Battle of Munda took place there, pitting the troops of Julius Caesar and Pompey against each other and deciding the fate of Rome. And during another much more recent civil war, the Spanish, Robert Capa and Gerda Taro took the iconic photo Death of a militiaman in this Andalusian town, which gave way to modern reportage. The olive trees that have been cultivated in the area for more than two thousand years were witnesses to 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 limited the production of olive oil throughout Spain and in Andalusia, as the main source, in particular. The result is well known: prices at origin have exceeded eight euros per kilo this summer, a historic record, and the extra virgin liter bottle is paid at the supermarket for more than ten euros, 67% above the value of One year ago. The appellation of liquid gold was never so accurate.
The new olive collection campaign that is just starting now does not look much better. You only have to go through the sea of ??olive trees that stretches across Córdoba, Jaén and Granada to prove it. From a bird’s eye view, from the top of the Castle of Espejo, property of the Dukes of Osuna, you can see brown streaks instead of the intense green that the olive trees should look like these days. Already at the beginning of cultivation we find the reason: some of the trees have dry leaves and only some have fruit hanging from them or they are very small, almost a stone covered with a thin layer of skin, when they should be full.
“I’ve never seen anything like this, two short harvests in a row, this drought, and I’ve been doing it for more than fifty years,” says José, a neighbor of Espejo and a small owner of olive groves. If last year he collected a little more than 6,000 kilos of olives, this year he expects to get 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, fuels, fertilizers…– have increased by 150%, the same as the price of oil has risen in the last two years.
The Ministry of Agriculture forecasts 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, therefore the total food availability is estimated to be low. 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 around 550,600 tonnes, 7% above the previous one, but still 40.1% less than usual. Extremadura, Castilla-La Mancha, Aragon and the Valencian Community will greatly exceed the records of a year ago, although the total weight is discreet. Catalonia, for its part, will be the most affected, with a drop in production of 20% compared to the last campaign and 60% compared to the average of the last five years. There is nothing to predict, therefore, that the final price of this central food in the Mediterranean diet will drop substantially in the coming months.
What happened to them, in the olive trees? “It wasn’t just the drought,” replies Pablo Ortiz, manager of the San Isidro d’Espejo cooperative, belonging to the DCoop group, the first olive oil producer in Europe, the result of the merger of Cordoliva and Hojiblanca. “The olive tree only blooms once a year, in the 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 burnt”, he continues. The persistent drought was added to the decline in flowering caused by that unprecedented heat wave. The quality of the olive oil in the cooperatives of this municipality remains excellent, above average. But all the trullos have seen production fall progressively, as is the case throughout the territory. “We usually collect around 23 million kilos of olives per campaign, we’ve reached 32 in the best years, but last season it dropped to ten million kilos,” sums up Ortiz. And they can still be satisfied, he admits. In cooperatives in neighboring towns they barely reach 20% of the 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 deal with an injustice. At that time, the mills that ground the olives were private, some of which were owned by landowners. They took advantage of the circumstances of small farmers, until they said enough. The peasants were aware that the owners of the mills were trying to deceive them, they were not paying them what they were entitled to for the olives they collected, and they decided to join forces to raise their own trullo. Those miserly owners were left without raw material, while San Isidro now has 5,000 hectares of cultivation, 95% of the Picual variety, with a turnover of around 13 million euros in seasons without drought. Most of the 1,030 members are small and medium-sized owners for whom the olive tree represents a secondary source of income. “Years ago a family could live on a plot of five hectares, but nowadays it’s impossible”, says Alfonso, a member of the cooperative. Almost all combine oil production with jobs in construction or the service sector.
It is hard to find a person in this Córdoba municipality of 3,300 inhabitants who is not linked to the olive tree. Despite the difficulties brought about by the lack of rain and the increase in costs, olive groves continue to constitute the main economic activity in the area, points out the mayor of Espejo, Florentino Santos, of the PSOE – in the town, perhaps in the past collective, the socialists or IU have always governed there. “The olive harvests are temporary, but the municipality lives on this all year round: those who do not have a plot work as laborers, work in restoration, in construction… Everything is linked to evolution from the olive grove”, says Santos, who advocates for a more stable pricing system.
Agricultural production decades ago was more diversified in this territory, with some cereals and vines. Over time, these crops were abandoned and the focus was on olive groves, which were more profitable. Until climate change, with Spain in 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 they can’t make ends meet. This is the case of the mayor himself, with a small plot of family origin.
The economic impact of the fall of olive groves in Andalusia is significant. The olive campaign produced 3,567.15 million euros in 2021, while in 2022, already with the lack of rain and the decline in production on top, it dropped to 2,860 million euros, despite the rise of prices, according to data from the Board of Andalusia.
This exceptional situation, with little raw material at skyrocketing prices, has turned oil into a product much coveted by thieves. The Civil Guard has reinforced troops, will monitor with drones and will always demand the oil traceability certificate from the transporters – where the oil comes from and what is its destination – to try to avoid thefts like the one of a few weeks ago in Carcabuey, also in Córdoba. The thieves took 56,000 kilos of extra virgin oil, valued at half a million euros. In Espejo, the three cooperatives there – San Isidro, San Bartolomé and Virgen de la Oliva – and the City Council launched a surveillance service called “rural daycare” three years ago, which has helped reduce theft. “Since then, there have hardly been any incidents,” explains Floren Reyes, from the San Bartolomé cooperative. A farmer in the village remembers that 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 watched more than ever.
Farmers are not just crossing their fingers waiting for rain and temperatures to return to normal – the olive tree needs a cold period to regenerate. They try to anticipate the evolution of the climate and optimize production with the introduction of new types of olive cultivation that are more profitable. Mara Notario, agricultural technician in San Isidro, highlights the increase in super-intensive olive groves, which is progressing in the province of Córdoba, “even in the dry season”. This technique makes better use of the land, with a higher 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 the cost is reduced to 1.4 euros on average”, emphasizes Tomás García Azcárate, expert in agricultural policy of the CSIC. However, this cultivation involves a change of variety. “It works with the arbequina and the arboçana, smaller olive trees, fences instead of trees, which can be collected with the harvester, and the need for labor is reduced,” explains Notario. About 20% of the olive groves are already super-intensive and are increasing, which will profoundly modify the landscape. “It’s not an ornamental tree, it’s a crop”, they defend 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 are trying to restore profitability and attractiveness to the activity in order to reverse the lack of generational relief that plagues farms. The average age of members in many cooperatives exceeds 50 or 60 years. “This is causing an incipient process of concentration of hectares in the hands of investors and large corporations, who buy or lease plots”, insists Cristóbal Cano, responsible for olive oil at the UPA agricultural union.
But above all, small and medium-sized owners need water as soon as possible. If it rains in the next few weeks, before the peak of the harvest, the olives will be able to regain some weight. How dependent they are on the sky is shown by the shout of joy that some emitted on Wednesday in Espejo when it started raining heavily unexpectedly. Liquid gold is no longer just oil, now it is also water.
