Olive Oil Tycoons

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June 29, 2012
1 Comment

 

We cook with olive oil often, but we don’t often think about where our olive oil comes from, let alone if it is sustainably produced. Nearing 50% of the world’s olive oil comes from Andalucia, a southern region in Spain, where over-supply and dropping prices are quickly becoming a problem.

Olive oil expert and food writer Nancy Harmon Jenkins takes a closer look at why Spanish olive oil is turning into a commodity, closer to kitchen grease than extra-virgin. The problem has its roots in subsidies given by the European Union. These subsidies, generous and awarded to the larger olive oil companies, are leading toward over-production and away from sustainable farming practices.  

If we can’t revert to Roman customs, like a Financial Times writer suggested, and begin bathing in olive oil, Jenkins offers another, more reasonable solution: shift our support to high-quality, smaller-scale producers. It’s a small change, but an important one nonetheless.

Do Bad Politics Thwart Good Olive Oil? from Zester Daily

See what other Food52 readers are saying.

Kenzi Wilbur

Written by: Kenzi Wilbur

I have a thing for most foods topped with a fried egg, a strange disdain for overly soupy tomato sauce, and I can never make it home without ripping off the end of a newly-bought baguette. I like spoons very much.

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1 Comment

dymnyno
dymnyno June 29, 2012
The small producers produce the most delicious olive oil. In the Napa Valley a lot of wineries produce small batches of olive oil each year, including ourselves. One of the problems with many of these little producers is that a lot of the time the trees are more ornamental that production farmed. The cost of making a little olive oil is that the pressing and the cost of the glass bottles is super expensive . We usually end up with about 30 to 50 gallons a year. My husband (MBA Columbia) likes to joke that we sell our oil for $40.00 a bottle and it costs us $50.00 to produce it. What a business model!