BEJA, Portugal — If your favorite bottle of Mediterranean olive oil starts costing more, blame unseasonable European weather — and tiny insects. High spring temperatures, a cool summer and abundant rain are taking a big bite out of the olive harvest in some key regions of Italy, Spain, France and Portugal. The shortfall could translate into higher prices for some olive oils and is dealing another blow to southern Europe’s bruised economies as they limp out of a protracted financial crisis. In Spain, the world’s biggest producer, the young farmers association Asaja says 2014 is “another disaster” after a calamitous harvest two years ago. Consumers are already paying 1 euro a liter more for their olive oil, Asaja president Luis Carlos Valero says, though he doesn’t anticipate a hefty price jump. The flies have long been a problem for olive oil producers, but the scale this year has astonished farmers. In Beja, 110 miles southeast of the Portuguese capital Lisbon, producers deploy satellite technology on their high-tech farms these days but after generations they are still fighting age-old enemies: the olive fly and a fruit fungus that turns olives brown and makes them shrivel like prunes. Portuguese growers are doing what the French have done: harvesting earlier and faster than usual before any more is lost. Since mid-October, a month earlier than usual, crews have been hurrying through the long ranks of olive trees that stretch to the horizon.
Blighted Harvest Could Drive Up Olive Oil Prices
Associated Press, San Francisco Chronicle: Business
Fri, 11/21/2014 - 6:00pm
BING NEWS:
- Experts predicted olive oil prices would skyrocket due to scorching temperatures. They were right
“Now fears are mounting over the very real possibility that the country’s inventory will run out before the next harvest begins, in October,” Graham wrote at the time. In recent months, however, those ...
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