News The price of olive oil soars, and thieves go after century-old trees in the Mediterranean

[The Helper]

SPATA, Greece — In an olive grove on the outskirts of Athens, grower Konstantinos Markou pushes aside the shoots of new growth to reveal the stump of a tree — a roughly 150-year-old specimen, he said, that was among 15 cut down on his neighbor’s land by thieves eager to turn it into money.

Surging olive oil prices, driven in part by two years of drought in Spain, has meant opportunity for criminals across the Mediterranean. Warehouse break-ins, dilution of premium oil with inferior product and falsification of shipping data are on the rise in olive-growing heartlands of Greece, Spain and Italy. And perhaps worst of all: gangs using chainsaws to steal heavily laden branches and even entire trees from unguarded groves.

“The olive robbers can sometimes produce more oil than the owners themselves — seriously,” Markou said, before heading off to patrol his own grove at nightfall.

The crimes mean fewer olives for growers already contending with high production costs and climate changes that have brought warmer winters, major flooding and more intense forest fires. In Italy’s southern Puglia region, growers are pleading with police to form an agriculture division. Greek farmers want to bring back a rural police division that was phased out in 2010. In Spain, a company has developed tracking devices that look like olives to try to catch thieves.

The price of olive oil soars, and thieves go after century-old trees in the Mediterranean

In the Mediterranean's olive-growing countries, the extreme weather caused by climate change is taking a toll.

www.latimes.com

 

[Varine]

Called it. I bought like 30 gallons of olive oil in May and the owner was really mad about it, tried to make me to send it back, and it's gone up every week since then. I deserve a raise, I'm saving this restaurant so much fucking money. I also bought a fuck ton of sriracha right before the sriracha company wasn't allowed to buy their peppers anymore so we were the only ones in town with it, but we ran out in like two months and I had to go through like five different shitty srirachas until we figured out how to make it. He was really mad about that too, didn't think we would use it.

Meanwhile the moron we have for a bartender ordered like 15 cases of this artificial huckleberry mixer thing that we barely fucking use and that's fine, we'll just have it all year.