Of the 300 inhabitants of Cabacés (Priorat), a total of 230 are members of the agricultural cooperative. The people live off the countryside. And exclusively from the oil production, “the only crop that adapts well to this terrain and this climate,” explains José Antonio Robles, president of the entity. But the drought, which has been punishing this corner of the Siurana extra virgin designation of origin, “has left several local families without any income this year,” Robles continues. The harvest will be this 2023 80% lower than normal and that has already forced the cooperative to increase the price of oil by 73%. “Last year we sold a five-liter bottle for 29 euros… Now we have had to raise it to 50,” she details.
Olive oil is a very clear example to understand what climate inflation means. In a single year, the product has increased its retail price by 73% due to the poor harvests that have occurred in recent years. He drought impact and of the high temperatures In the producing areas it has been decisive, because in addition to reducing the number of liters produced, since the olive groves have not produced as many olives as when they are irrigated, the stocks that were available have been exhausted.
In Cabacés they can give a good account of this. “Last year the water ran out and they closed our Margalef Dam, from which we supply ourselves. The trees, not receiving sufficient watering, did not get the flowers to set and, therefore, the olives did not even form“says the president of the cooperative. “And the few that did manage to move forward have matured poorly and now produce little oil,” argues the producer, while supervising the work of harvesting the olives from one of his farms, already in in the heart of the Montsant mountain range.
“We were below costs”
“Now, it’s true, we are above costsbut before, two years ago, we were quite below,” clarifies Robles. In any case, he emphasizes, it is not the producers or the agricultural cooperatives that set the supermarket price. “What people pay in the city is what that the intermediaries have decided“he remembers. If they have increased prices in direct sales, which they carry out in the cooperative store, it has been almost a matter of survival. The viability of the entity and the families that live in Cabacés would be (and still is) ) in question. “A normal year here we would obtain between one million and 1.2 million kilos of olives… This year it will remain around 250,000 kilos.”
The production costs In the Cabacés plots they are high and difficult to reduce. “It has been studied,” says Robles, “that from the moment the olive blossom appears until the fruit reaches the mill, each farmer has expenses of approximately 33 cents per kilo of olive.” This is because as the farms are small and the terrain is steep, the work has to be done manually and mechanization is difficult. These amounts, although not specifically climatic, are also reflected in the price that the consumer pays for the oil.
An ecological product
One of the solutions that the farmers of Cabacés have opted for to try to reduce these expenses is the ecological production. “On its own, in this environment, the biodiversity of the forests helps the trees and the fruit that grow from them do not need fertilizers that are used in other places,” says Robles. “We can grow organically produced crops without any prior treatment,” he adds.
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Advised by Agrofood Research and Technology Institute (IRTA), a research center that depends on the Generalitat, the farmers of Cabacés are working on another side to try to ensure that the climate crisis does not penalize them even more. “Here we grow three varieties of olive. The majority is arbequina, which is the most common. But then we have what is known as ‘rojal’, which is what our ancestors planted in the coldest points, because it is a olive that withstands low temperatures better and that it gives a different oil, more bitter, more spicy,” says Robles, who explains that there are already several farmers in the town who have decided to plant ‘rojal’ olive trees, to recover, in the process, the species. “And also there is the ‘negreta’, which is now more of a minority.”
With all this, and with a oil tourism promotion program who directs the technique of the Núria Bru cooperative, Cabacés is trying to secure its future and prevent the flight of young families. “If we are the guarantors of the territory, those who have to ensure that these landscapes remain this way, we have to act now,” Robles claims.