EXTRAVIRGIN OLIVE OIL: TRUE AND IMPORTED
ONLY 28% OF THE EXTRA VIRGIN OIL SOLD IN ITALY IS PRODUCED IN OUR COUNTRY. OUT OF 900 THOUSAND TONS OF CONSUMPTION AND EXPORT OF EVO OIL, 600 THOUSAND ARE IMPORTED
Only 28% of EVO oil consumed o exported from Italy is really Italian
By Donatella Cinelli Colombini, winedestination, Casato Prime Donne
The data on EVO oil are impressive and reveal a bleak panorama. On one side, the Apulian olive groves destroyed by Xylella and the hilly ones abandoned due to lack of manpower. On the other side, a market unwilling to pay remunerative prices for Italian extra virgin olive oil made to the highest standards while the shop shelves are full of low-priced extra virgin olive oil from intensive olive groves in foreign countries.
The RTO Telematic Oil Registers show a stock of 190 thousand tons consisting of 71% EVO oil which is increasingly less Italian.
The Italian EVO oil production crisis does not seem to be stopping: plant diseases, adverse climate, abandonment of olive groves… the reasons are numerous but the results are devastating.
OUR NATIONAL PRODUCTION OF EVO OIL IS 28% OF WHAT WE NEED
Even the Italian olive harvest last autumn marked a drop of 90 thousand tons compared to the previous year. The production deficit is increasingly marked: we produce barely 240 thousand tons, that is 28% of what we need. Every year we need 850-900 thousand tons of which 550 for domestic consumption and 350 thousand tons for export. For this reason, agri-food industrialists source from Tunisia, Spain, Greece and other countries. Puglia in the South and Umbria in the Center are the nerve centres of storage.