Drought in Europe: towards a shortage of olive oil in the coming months?

"The olive tree may be traditionally subservient to dry lands, but the current situation is dramatic", comments bitterly Hélène Lasserre, director of the conservation and research center of France Olive, the interprofessional association of the French olive sector. In question, an exceptional rainfall deficit. For the specialist in the impact of global warming on this thousand-year-old culture, the lack of water in part of Gard, Var or even the Pyrenees Orientales - which are on alert - "is such that the issue is more to minimize the losses, but to save the trees”.

In the South-East, the cumulative rainfall has been 25% to 50% down since last September, according to Météo France readings. It even reaches 50 to 75% in places. A situation that is all the more dramatic in that in France, 80% of olive groves are not irrigated. Because even if the cultivation of the Athenian tree is not the most water-intensive, it remains "necessary" explains Laurent Bélorgey, president of France Olive and olive grower in the Var. “The olive tree can withstand heat and drought, but if it lacks water, it will not bear fruit. The tree needs water to produce, at least for a certain period”. However, "the spring rains are essential, they allow the tree to restart a new cycle of flowering and therefore to bear fruit". At this time, production from non-irrigated olive groves is more than uncertain.

But the French case is only the tree that hides the forest. The European Union accounts for two thirds of olive oil production worldwide. Our Spanish neighbor is largely in the lead with 65.6% of EU production, followed by Italy (14.5%) and Greece (10.2%). French olive growers produce barely 5% of the olive oil consumed in France. However, the most serious drought is that which hits the Iberian Peninsula, where the absence of rain is coupled with temperatures exceeding 35° C.

“In Andalusia and Catalonia (two of the most olive-growing regions of Spain, editor’s note), the low autumn rains were not enough to fill the water tables. Since then, almost nothing has fallen and the rivers are dry. Flowering having already started there and the extreme aridity being detrimental to the viability of pollen and therefore to fertilization, we can only be worried about the next harvest”, Hélène Lasserre is alarmed.

Especially since the provisional figures give the 2022-2023 harvest as catastrophic. Spain saw its production collapse, dropping from 1.49 to 0.68 million tonnes (-54%). Same observation in Italy, with a decrease of 27%. Only Greece recorded an increase (42%), which is far from sufficient to compensate for the losses suffered by the other main producing countries. In fact, European stocks for the current year should be almost halved. So, for the end consumer, the note is likely to be salty.

Currently, INSEE estimates that the price of a liter of olive oil has increased by 30% on average since January 2022. An outbreak that Laurent Bélorgey, president of France Olive, explains by “the increase in the prices of energy, fertilizers, glass, packaging and transport". And according to the most recent data from Eurostat, European olive oil stocks are expected to decrease by 41.9% compared to the previous year, due to the disastrous harvest of 2022-2023. Hence an unprecedented scarcity of the product and therefore a surge in the selling price. Especially in France where the oil is massively imported, which inflates the addition.

Add to that the threat to the next harvest: the rise should further strengthen, or even become permanent. “Today's water stress is causing lasting damage to trees by blocking the spring growth of twigs that support next year's fruit. We can only realize this over the long term”, explains Laurent Bélorgey. Harvests could therefore dwindle from year to year if the water deficit persists. Especially since "the usual wood/fruit alternation - according to which the olive tree develops one or the other annually - does not explain the fall in production last year, nor that which we fear today. today,” he says.

Faced with the gradual rise in temperatures and the combined scarcity of precipitation, agricultural practices are forced to adapt. One solution could be to plant more resistant varieties of olive trees, such as the one found in Tunisia. But "this would prevent you from benefiting from the eight French Protected Designations of Origin, which value quality over quantity", notes Laurent Bélorgey. Hélène Lasserre, the director of the conservation and research center of France Olive, would lean more towards developing the technique of grafting as the Italians do, in order to strengthen the existing varieties in France, without having to replant them.

"Climate change is causing a northernization of the climates, so Andalusia will soon experience a North African climate, and by 2100 Nîmes will have the Cordoba climate," adds Hélène Lasserre. This is why new territories could become olive-growing lands, in particular the South-West and the upstream part of the Rhône valley. "The olive tree adapts to almost all soils, as long as they are not too saline or hydromorphic (which retain water)", she explains. This is why the Gironde Chamber of Agriculture, in cooperation with France Olive, has already set up observation plots to see if the olive tree could thrive on land gradually abandoned by viticulture. But to avoid a rush to the North, the fate of the precious green liquid hangs on the fall of blue gold.