Europe olive oil industry in crisis
Curtis Cord, Founder and editor-in-chief of Olive Oil Times spoke with CGTN Europe on the olive oil industry.
Transcript
00:00 Well, for more on this, I spoke to Curtis Cord, who's editor-in-chief of the Olive Oil Times.
00:05 Well, agricultural larceny is nothing new, right? It's been going on a long time.
00:11 But olives now are a high-value crop. So we have to, you know, farmers are going to need to put
00:19 measures in place to prevent theft. They're going to have to put sensors and security
00:25 and night watches, and they're even making small trackers in the shapes of olives to be able to
00:34 track down stolen fruit. So all of these investments are new, and they're going to,
00:41 you know, they're going to cost some money, and presumably those costs will be passed on to
00:46 consumers. So olive-shaped trackers, that's quite something. Labor shortage is another issue,
00:52 isn't it? How bad is that, and what's being done about it? Farmers tell us every year that this is
00:57 one of their biggest challenges. And, you know, it's the amount of labor that is required to
01:06 harvest for three million tons of olive oil every year is just astounding. Hopefully,
01:14 with the higher prices that we're seeing now, they'll be able to pay a higher wage and attract
01:21 some of that labor that they need every year. And Curtis, what is the production picture looking
01:27 like for next year for olive oil? It's not looking good. You know, we need about three million tons
01:34 of olive oil. That's what the market is calling for, and that traditionally is what we've been
01:39 able to produce. This year, we're looking at more like 2.4 million tons. The region of Haen in Spain,
01:47 which in a normal year would produce 1.6 million tons. This year, they're looking more like
01:53 900,000 tons. So that's 600,000 tons less than we'd really like to see from that region alone.
02:01 That's 20 percent of the global supply. So there's not going to be enough olive oil to go around,
02:08 and I think we need to get used to that fact. That's why we're seeing the prices rise dramatically
02:15 higher. You know, there's only so much available and it's going to go to the highest bidder.
02:20 Olive oil traditionally associated with countries, Mediterranean countries like
02:26 Italy and Greece. Your joining us from the United States. What other countries and regions
02:31 are boosting their production and could they overtake European production centers?
02:35 No, I don't see that happening anytime soon. You know, in the United States, we import 300,000
02:43 tons or about 10 percent of the global supply. What you are seeing now with the higher prices
02:51 is increased investments in new production in regions not traditionally associated
02:58 with olive oil. Right. So we're seeing new production facilities going up in places like
03:04 India, like China, like Australia and South America. And these are very modern facilities
03:10 that require less labor. They're very efficient.
03:14 And we're seeing a lot of new investments go into those places now.