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Olive oil soars, and thieves go after century-old trees in the Mediterranean
- ggm 3y agoKilling trees for short term gain is just hatefully stupid. This is "selling the last harvest before the storm" behaviour. You would think an olive stealing gang knew there was a smaller crop next year if you chainsaw the limbs of the tree off. "I don't care" is awful. Analogies to the hive stealing in NZ come to mind, Manuka honey is so valuable, its frequently stolen by the same bike gangs which do meth dealing.
- Waterluvian 3y agoIf they elect to take the long position, usually a crime syndicate will move in on the industry and capture it. That doesn’t mean they can’t also opportunistically profit from industries they aren’t interested in managing.
- cyanydeez 3y agook, so, you think petty thrives have more long term incentives than what most capitalist endeavors have shown?
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- barbazoo 3y agoThose short term thinking Italian farmers only leaving the trees in for 150 years for their short term profits shakesfist /s
- tlb 3y agoKilling trees increases the market price of olive oil, so it's to the crime syndicate's advantage. So it's just hateful, not stupid.
- whirlwin 3y agoIt depends actually. If the thieves have to find new fields every year, it will be a logistics problem
- lovich 3y agoThat sounds like next years problem. If global mega corps already struggle with looking past the next quarter when it comes to consequences why would you expect people who are living off of crime to have a longer term view?
- whirlwin 3y agoThere are many factors at play here. It might be different levels of consciousness involved. Cutting down the whole tree is a bigger barrier and requires another level of ruthlessness.
- whatshisface 3y ago...you know that organized criminals kill people, right?
- whirlwin 3y agoDo all organized criminals kill people at every possibility?
- whatshisface 3y agoDo they cut down trees at every possibility?
- anonymouskimmer 3y agoStart out as thieves then pivot to a protection racket for the remaining farmers.
- seydor 3y agoMost likely they don't kill the trees. Farmers prune the trees every year as well
- RajT88 3y ago> Killing trees for short term gain is just hatefully stupid. Like any other kind of poaching. Killing elephants for their tusks, or killing sharks for their fins. People are fucking selfish, short-sighted assholes.
- s0rce 3y agoI mean killing elephants and sharks is terrible but thats the only way to harvest those parts so its a bit different, its not like you could carefully remove them and they'd grow another set for harvest next year.
- RajT88 3y agoYou have a point on the shark fins, but Elephant tusks for sure grow back!
- kelipso 3y agoElephant tusks are teeth, they don't grow back. Rhino horns on the other hand are hair, so they grow back.
- OJFord 3y agoSo are 'milk teeth' hair, and adult teeth teeth? More seriously - that's a funny evolutionary result isn't it, (exactly) two sets of teeth in life?
- undersuit 3y agoYou're born with both sets of teeth, no hair teeth here, usually unerupted. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_tooth_development https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_tooth_development
- shiroiuma 3y agoYeah, if you've never seen one, take a look at a child's skull: it's freaky-looking. Most people have no idea because we don't normally see these, only adult ones.
- pjungwir 3y agoIt is said that Solon, the most revered law-giver of Athens, made cutting an olive tree punishable by death. I've also heard that because of their slow growth, planting an olive tree is something you do not for yourself but for your children. EDIT: one more bit of historical perspective. Myth says that Athena and Poseidon had a contest to see who would be the patron of Athens. Poseidon gave the gift of a saltwater spring (to which I guess the Athenians said, "uhh, thanks, I guess."). Athena gave the gift of the olive tree. Obviously Athens is named after her. So that's how much they valued those trees.
- thinkingtoilet 3y agoMy family is Sicilian and I don't think people understand how much olive trees mean to us. We have family in Sicily and if you did something to harm their olive trees it would be one small step below doing something to harm a family member.
- pazimzadeh 3y agoThat's interesting. What should the modern punishment be for this? Israel’s Campaign Against Palestinian Olive Trees http://yris.yira.org/global-issue/6018 http://yris.yira.org/global-issue/6018 https://www.newarab.com/news/israeli-settlers-destroy-350-trees-west-bank-olive-grove https://www.newarab.com/news/israeli-settlers-destroy-350-tr... https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2023/11/6/our-hearts-burn-gazas-olive-farmers-say-israel-war-destroys-harvest https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2023/11/6/our-hearts-burn... https://archive.ph/nkfc3 https://archive.ph/nkfc3
- rigid 3y ago> Killing trees for short term gain is just hatefully stupid. Reminds me of the Bologna/Aquino Paper on society collapsing due to excessive deforestation: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-63657-6?error=cookies_not_supported&code=e40662af-0636-49a1-8c6f-4ba581c3b2ae https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-63657-6?error=coo... Thrill read.
- mikrotikker 3y agoA few years ago yea, not anymore the ass fell out of the manuka market.
- PedroBatista 3y agoThis has been a problem for years in Portugal too, but lately the number and the amount of stealing has increased dramatically. More like a coordinated organized crime. Historically this was done mostly by some ethnic groups, I'm not sure if now there other forces or people behind it, as police forces have been more of less sleeping on this since it has been a "country problem" not a "city one" and as it has some ethnicities attached to it, the media also avoids to touch it, so the answer is: most of us don't really know what's going on in a deep way.
- meindnoch 3y agoHmmm... which ethnic groups exactly?
- barbazoo 3y agoThe poor ones
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- hobotime 3y agoNon-Portuguese colonizers
- selimthegrim 3y agoGo ahead, say the quiet part out loud. Who is colonizing Portugal?
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- WD40forRust 3y agoTOP KEK! The Overton Window is about to go relativistic in the opposite direction...
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- sergioisidoro 3y agoA note that food oil prices are going up because of the war in Ukraine, which has reduced the availability of sunflower seed oil significantly, putting pressure in the Olive oil supply. In normal conditions, Ukraine would be the world largest producer of sunflower seed oil.
- Scoundreller 3y agoCause or convenient excuse to raise prices? Just some math: 9% of edible oil production is sunflower oil. https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/chart-gallery/gallery/chart-detail/?chartId=104023 https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/chart-gallery/gallery... Ukraine historically produced 1/4 of that 9% https://latifundist.com/en/rating/uzhe-razlili-maslo-rejting-proizvoditelej-podsolnechnika https://latifundist.com/en/rating/uzhe-razlili-maslo-rejting... Let’s rule of thumb this and say production is half what it was in Ukraine (and assume nobody else has switched to edible oil crops and Ukraine doesn’t produce other edible oil crops, both probably false). That means there is 1.1% less edible oil going around this year for that reason. I think this is within the noise of good crop vs bad crop years, and edible oil is pretty elastic in use.
- veidr 3y ago> Cause or convenient excuse > to raise prices? It's most commonly both.
- AlecSchueler 3y agoWhen you make it about just the numbers 1.1% difference doesn't seem like much, but you have to remember there's a complex network of producers, distributors and buyers fighting to make up that difference, the practical results of which can have other knock on effects throughout the network. Also, to answer your question, sellers leveraging the shortage caused by the war in Ukraine is also a result of the war in Ukraine.
- bad_alloc 3y ago> Surging olive oil prices, driven in part by two years of drought in Spain, has meant opportunity for criminals across the Mediterranean. i.e. we are beginning to see the impacts of climate change on the food supply in Europe.
- NKosmatos 3y agoExactly, many people I've spoken with who have olive trees are saying this. The lack of rain and the high temperatures have played an important role to the production and yield of this years olives.
- zoeysmithe 3y agoWealthy westerners thinking climate change will only affect the global south are in for some hard lessons soon. "It can't happen here, it'll affect mostly the poors in the tropics, so we won't constraint capitalism at all for it or change our lifestyles," crowd think they're going to somehow outrun climate change. They don't realize as a group entirely dependent on exploiting the global south not only are they are risk if the gs is hurt, but their own climate is suffering now. If anything the northern West is more vulnerable to climate change than most due to it existing on a series of rube-goldberg machines in a long line of dominoes that, if hit in the right place, could cause systematic failure. Olive trees are low stakes, but ultimately a sign that climate change is moving north.
- RandomLensman 3y agoYou'd be surprised how self-contained the West could be if it chooses to.
- abeppu 3y agoYears ago I read some theory that part of the social pressure to create early states with centralized power and militaries in places with grain-centric agriculture was about the ease of stealing harvested grain. By comparison, places that had root-crops which could be left in the ground and harvested as needed, thieves could not quickly/easily take a lot of value, so there was less need to guard resources. The current article is kind of a reminder that the safety of crops / the difficulty of theft is variable with context; it's not just an attribute of the crop-type. If this continues, I wonder if we'd see tree-owners engage in something like tree-spiking, so it's literally unsafe to cut their trees.
- justinator 3y agoDidn't work for the Irish. British took all the meat and left the potatoes behind. So although they were kept alive, it wasn't a great existence. And then the potato blight happened. Which England naturally didn't help out relieving.
- narinxas 3y agoall that desperation IS a source of energy, granted the boundaries/gates/walls are administered in such a way to allow harvest... just (maybe toke up and) think about how mitochondria actually work. the 'energy' all comes from gradients of various sorts of presures (like the presure of hunger i.e. desperation)
- Wildgoose 3y agoNot actually true. The first year the Famine Relief provided by the British Government was better than anything anywhere else in Europe, (which was also affected). The second and third years the pressure on the Treasury was such that Westminster wanted the rich Irish to also contribute, (Ireland wasn't subjected to the Income Tax being paid in Britain). The Irish refused and so in response Westminster dumped the problem of Famine Relief entirely on Irish local government, which was simply incapable to take on such a mammoth task. (The reason why the Treasury couldn't afford to borrow the money required was that they had just recently borrowed huge sums of money to buy the freedom of all the slaves in the British Empire).
- NKosmatos 3y agoThe situation with olive oil this year is bad... so bad that some farmers are using fake GPS olives to track stolen olives: https://greekreporter.com/2023/10/23/greek-farmers-use-gps-technology-olive-theft/ https://greekreporter.com/2023/10/23/greek-farmers-use-gps-t... The price for virgin olive oil used to be 3-4 €/liter in the last couple of years and now it has soared to above 10 €/L. You can find some local producers (relatives/friends) selling for around 8 €/L but most people in the big cities will never see such a low price, on the contrary it will reach them for around 15 €/L :-( Greece, Italy, Spain and Portugal (among other Mediterranean countries) rely heavily on olive oil for food preparation and this will affect prices and inflation.
- Spivak 3y agoIs there some cultural reason this won't drive people to alternatives and they'll just eat the cost? Food has got to be one of the most elastic things in all of human history with diets shifting wildly over short periods of time depending on what's available and affordable.
- axioms_End 3y agoI think olive oil is not that easy to replace as it's often used as a condiment due to it's unique taste.
- tw04 3y agoI would imagine much like "truffle oil" - you can take a concentrated extract and add it to a neutral oil to get the same flavor. If it stays high for long enough I have to imagine someone will release a competing product.
- s0rce 3y agoDo people like the fake truffle oil or just pretend because it seems fancy and exotic? I can't stand it, way too strong.
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- rcpt 3y agoIt would be great if people would cut down all the olive trees in southern Italy as it'd curb the spread of xylella fastidiosa. That disease will do to Mediterranean olives what citrus greening did to Florida oranges
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- j45 3y agoClarified butter is a nice replacement for Olive Oils. Very high burning point.
- lotsofpulp 3y agoI find the taste to be very different.
- pempem 3y agoclarified butter poured over salad has a different feel certainly.
- munk-a 3y agoThe biggest game changer is actually just using a cooking oil - there are plenty of alternatives that will have absolutely no impact on the final taste... and olive oil actually has a relatively low smoke point compared to other cooking oils. If olive oil was just used for flavoring, emulsification and dipping bread in we'd have a huge over supply - too many people were raised on "Drizzle some olive oil in your pan before heating".
- kzrdude 3y agoWhy too many? I'm convinced it is healthier, so I think too few use olive oil where possible.
- reedjosh 3y agoWhat is cooking oil? Seed oil? Cause no thank you!! Luckily everyone seems to think animal fats are no good, so my family gets grass fed tallow for $30 a gallon tub. Tallow and lard are excellent for frying or fattening bready items.
- munk-a 3y agoTallow and lard are definitely excellent alternatives - but yea I was suggesting seed oils like peanut, safflower, sunflower or canola/rapeseed. Rendered fats have a weird reputation as there were health crazes that demonized it in the past but it's like most other oils - use in moderation... it's excellent to keep on hand though as it really makes a difference in baking.
- 0xbadcafebee 3y agoI don't know which is worse: destroying an old and beautiful tree that takes years to bear fruit, or selling olive wood as firewood. That stuff is $26-$100 per board foot, and is a gorgeous hardwood. It's hard to work and harder to dry, but the result is something special.
- Zaheer 3y agoFun fact: Olive trees on average can live 500 years(!) The oldest known is 1500 years. Also something similar happens in the West Bank: [1] https://time.com/5714146/olive-harvest-west-bank/ https://time.com/5714146/olive-harvest-west-bank/ [2] http://yris.yira.org/global-issue/6018 http://yris.yira.org/global-issue/6018
- seydor 3y agoThe thing is, being a worker in olive groves pays quite well. There s a huge shortage of farm workers , and many groves are left unharvested.
- codr7 3y agoI used to make 20 Euros a day harvesting olives by hand in southern Italy a few years back, not really my idea of well paid. But I did see a lot of unharvested resources; olives, oranges, lemons etc.
- seydor 3y agoit was 60-90 / day in greece last year , probably even higher this year due to lack of workers and the high price of oil This is definitely an area where robotics and AI would be very useful
- Galacta7 3y agoAren't there already mechanical tree shakers that harvest olives fairly efficiently?
- missedthecue 3y ago20 Euro a day? Wow. Did you work two hours per day? Why not work at McDonalds or Sigma supermarkets at that point? Or were there other factors at play (family farm, horticulture education, non-euro remuneration etc)
- WhereIsTheTruth 3y agoSounds like sabotage to me, just shake the tree and olives will fall very easily, easier to transport, you maximize your gain
- slim 3y agomaybe 20% will fall. For the rest you need to scrape them off the tree
- Wonnk13 3y agoWow, my girlfriend and I visited Crete earlier this year and took a tour of an old olive grove. They warned us prices were going to jump up, but this is bonkers.
- pvaldes 3y agoThis is organized crime and the economical effects are devastating. It does not matter if the trees can regrow The keyword here is diseases. Olive tree tuberculosis for example will easily propagate if you use the same pruning tool on different trees without disinfecting it. This is not a joke. We are talking about estimated damages of 20 billion euro (with a B) that the European Union has been suffering just by Xylella fastidiosa, the "olive tree ebola" at a rate of 5.5 billion bleed each year since it appeared in Apulia Italy on 2013 and later on Spanish almonds in 2016. The disease can affect olives, almonds, figs, plums or cherries. It has 500 species of hosts. Several new plagues entered inexplicably by Italy or Spain in the last decades. We should treat it much more seriously.
- gainda 3y agomy heart breaks when i read about the trees. There is no curse in Elvish, Entish, or the tongues of Men for this treachery.
- Modified3019 3y agoThere will soon be a future where olive orchards are guarded by suicide drones.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- coding123 3y agoI guess these short term price spikes are to be expected as each industry establishes new hidden price collusion tactics to copy all the other industries doing it.
- jcadam 3y agoYou peasants should be eating cheap seed oil. Olive oil is for your betters.
- Galacta7 3y agoExtra virgin olive oil is for the truly elite. The merely 10% only get the standard slutty olive oil.
- 4k1l 3y agoThe price for low quality olive oil in the german supermarkts went from 4€ last year to 8€ this year