The Hindu Business Line : Andalusia: The cradle of olives

All kinds of methods, from manual to mechanical, are used to pick and grade olives in Spain. Machines are more widely used nowadays, because of the labour shortage.

Rasheeda Bhagat

Recently in Spain

As our bus traverses the centre of the Andalusian region in Southern Spain, famous for dense olive groves that can sometimes stretch across hundreds of kilometres, it soon becomes evident how and why Spain is the largest world producer of olive oil. In the last six years Spain has produced, on an average, 1.1 million tonnes a year of what is widely referred across the world as liquid gold and 550,000 tonnes of table olives, which are exported to 100 countries, mainly in th e European Union, and mainly Italy. Nearly 50 per cent of its production is exported.

Spanish olive oil and table olives are widely available in India, and as Alberto Martin, area manager of Agro Sevilla, a group of table olive and olive oil co-operatives pointed out to a group of nine international journalists on an olive familiarisation trip to Spain organised by the International Olive Oil Council, he was amazed to find during a recent visit to India that olive oil in India is also being promoted through health and nutrition shops. “This is something I have not found in any country in the world; not even the bigger markets,” he says.

As in Mediterranean cultural history, growing olive trees is a deeply rooted passion among Spaniards and the country has an astonishing number of 308 million olive trees, which are cherished and protected almost like a national heritage. Of the 10 million hectares of olive groves in the world, Spain has the most land dedicated to olive groves.

What immediately strikes you about the olive cultivation here is the hilly domain and it is common to find groves extending over waves of undulating land. You also find multiple-trunk trees here; the reason being that in the olden days, the growers found it too expensive to dig too many holes and, hence, planted two or three saplings in one single pit!

Andalusia, with a high concentration of olive groves, accounts for nearly 84 per cent production of Spain’s olive oil, and the farmers here focus mainly on three varieties — picual, hojiblanca and lechin.

Olive oil from Spain accounts for nearly 40 per cent of the world production, and yet Spanish consumption of this oil, which you will frequently hear described in the Mediterranean olive growing region as a “fruit juice” — as after crushing olives the resultant oil does not undergo any addition or chemical processing — is not the highest in the world. Compared to the Greeks, who consume 23 kg of olive oil per capita a year, Spaniards consume around 13-14 kg per person. Mr Ciriaco Vasquez Hombrados, Sub-Director General, Ministry of Agriculture, Spain, points out that olive oil accounts for nearly 60 per cent of the cooking medium, with vegetable oils making up the rest.

History

In Spain you are likely to hear the country described as the “universal paradise of olive oil”, and Andalusia as “the essential cradle for this green gold”. This region is connected with the culture of olive oil, which finds frequent reference in its literature and folklore and has a great social influence here. Needless to say, the cuisine of this area makes a predominant use of this medium for cooking, salad dressing and as a delicious accompaniment for the wide variety of breads that form an essential aperitif in most meals.

According to information made available to us by the Spanish Ministry of Agriculture the Arabs encouraged the cultivation of olives during their presence here from the 8th to the 15th century, “although it was introduced much earlier, possibly by the Greeks, sometimes between the sixth and seventh century BC, or even earlier by the Phoenicians.”

There is evidence that the Romans exported Betica olive oil to other regions of the Roman Empire around the second century. “Olive oil from Cordoba and Jaen is said to have delighted the Caesars,” it adds.

Harvesting season

The harvesting season has already begun and we see all kinds of methods — from manual to mechanical — being used for picking the olives.

While the best of the table varieties have to be carefully picked with hands, others are picked with mechanised combs or huge vibrating machines where a fork-like appliance gets under the bottom branches and as the machine gives the tree a vigorous shake for about 30-40 seconds, a few labourers armed with sticks strike the branches to ensure that the bulk of the olives fall on the huge nylon nets spread on the ground. The Nunez de Prado olive groves stretch over an incredible 700 hectares in the city of Baena in the Cordoba region of Andalusia. Fortunately for us, the region we are taken around — Jaen, Cordoba, Granada and Seville — in southern Spain, is warm and sunny, blunting the memory of a cold Madrid with 8 degrees centigrade that one had landed in barely a day earlier.

Its patriarch, Mr Francisco Nunez de Prado, takes us around the groves, explaining how his ancestors and the present generation have striven to safeguard the family tradition in olive farming, which began seven generations back.

The effort is to keep alive the best of ancient cultures and practices associated in the production of olive oil. In their facility in Baena we find a charming old oil mill, which has been mechanised but only to a certain extent. The de Prado brothers are very fastidious about reaching the picked olives to the mill at the earliest as this ensures a far superior quality of the oil with its fruity aroma at its maximum. The better varieties — particularly picual — meant for the table are picked by hand. Even today, at their mill the olives are crushed into paste in huge granite millstones used during ancient times.

Shortage of labour is getting more and more acute when it comes to harvesting olives in Spain, forcing growers to go in for mechanised means. Though speedier and cheaper, the problem with mechanised olive harvesting comes in fruits meant for the table. The best of the picual and picuda variety of olives are hand-picked, because fruits that fall to the ground, particularly through mechanised plucking, get bruised or broken and becomes unfit for processing as table olives.

CO-OPERATIVES

Agro Sevilla is a collective of nine table olive co-operatives in Spain (they have farmers in Argentina and Chile too growing olives) with 2,500 farmers producing about 43,000 tonnes of olives a year, and seven olive oil co-operatives with 2,500 farmers producing 15,000 tonnes of olive oil a year.

It exports to 40 countries, including India, and also caters to supermarkets and food chains such as Subway, Papa Johns, etc. Its area manager, Mr Alfredo Martin, says that it began exporting its products to India (under the Olicoop brand) four years ago, and though the Indian market is small at the moment compared to its traditional markets such as the US, EU countries, Canada, Scandinavia, Australia, “the potential is huge, as I could personally see after my visit to India last year.”

He agrees that the table olives generally exported are “too salty for Asian taste, but if the market demands it, we can lower the salt content.” The salt comes from the brine in which olives have to be stored as part of the curing process. But olive growers such as this organisation are facing a labour shortage, the main reason for it being the booming tourism industry of Spain. The country gets about 40 million tourist a year, and you often hear that since its population is barely 44 million, it’s like having one tourist for each citizen.

“In international tourism, after the United States, tourists earlier used to head for France, mainly because of Paris, but this no longer holds true. Most Europeans now prefer Spain and because of the booming tourism industry there is a great demand for waiters, bartenders, guides, etc.” he says.

So, rather than come to olive groves to pick olives, which is a very hard and laborious task that “begins early in the morning, youngsters prefer to serve the tourism industry. They can dress well, meet a cosmopolitan group of people, interact with them and earn much more. So, from June to September when the tourism season as its peak — and most tourists head to the shores and the beaches — these people make a lot of money by catering to the tourists and by October-November when the olive harvesting begins and we call them for work, they say no thank you,” says Mr Martin.

The shelf-life of olive oil varies depending on the quality, the processing and storage methods and could be between one and two years. But once a bottle is opened the oil should not be kept for too long as oxidation affects the quality and can make it rancid. It might still be safe for consumption, but the aroma and taste take a beating. But table olives, he said, have a longer shelf life of around three years. “You could safely eat olives older than that; I’ve eaten olives that are six years old.”

He then moves on to the health and nutritional benefits of olives… one has heard about all the other factors, mostly how it lowers cholesterol and risk of heart disease. But this was a new one: “I’ve been told that olives contain more calcium than milk,” is his surprising disclosure!

Response may be sent to rasheeda@thehindu.co.in

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