Extra virgin olive oil crisis, why is Italy afraid to innovate?

However, there is a problem: ‘it is hard to make the consumer understand a fair price,’ points out the expert, ‘spoilt by continuous promotions that have proposed extra virgin as a shelf commodity, debasing its identity. If it is nutraceutical and functional, with precious antioxidants and biophenols, it is contradictory that it costs little’.

Not to mention the compulsory wording on the label: ‘Oil of superior category obtained directly from olives and solely by mechanical means’, the same for a 50 or 5 euro per litre bottle.

The situation is improving outside Italy, ‘in fact, small producers sell mainly abroad,’ he adds, ‘where they are paid well and in advance. The sector has not been able to manage and plan the market’. In particular, this has been seen with the use of generous funding from the European Union: ‘Spain has invested in communication and planning, but also planted a lot of olive trees. We, on the other hand, used the aid not as an investment, but by supplementing the income of producers who were able to lower prices on the distribution chain. Thus we debased the product’.

Dop and PGI, a missed opportunity

Italy must then design. “We seem to be afraid of the future,” attacks Caricato, “and there is an attitude of resistance to change. The big brands that in a century have invaded all continents, increasing consumption, are segmenting their offer and focusing on niches of excellence, but only because they were losing market share to small producers. Here, we do not accept the plurality of olive cultivation: it is right that family and hobby farming exist to safeguard the landscape, but to produce quantity we need modernity and vision’.

Italy therefore retreats ‘because itrefuses the modernisation of the olive grove. It has accepted ultrasound in the olive mill, but the olive grove wants to be traditional. It makes sense if we talk about Liguria or the heights between Maremma and Veneto, but in the plains it is uneconomical. Italy invented the high density technique, but it has been adopted in Spain and other countries’.