An Epiphany

Only now stepping wearily out of the very long stay in the Spanish Christmas decompression chamber, the writer decided to reintroduce himself to reality by doing the accounting for the olive harvest. Certain features stand out.

1). The crop was considerably smaller than it had led us to believe it would be. The culprits behind this sleight of hand? Small fruit and an absolute concentration of same on the visible outside of the tree;

2). The oil yield is off 3 points from normal years. Given that this figure is usually 25%, that translates into a 12% drop in the production of the stuff we actually sell. Behind this, we think, is the unusually cool weather right through June;

3). The olive oil extracted, which will be more or less equivalent to last year, is facing prices that date back to 2002 - 30% less than year-ago levels;

4). The end result of the effort, if prices remain stable at these levels, will be approximately a wash.

Quite obviously, a rethinking of the whole effort will be in order.

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