Spanish ‘green gold’ losing luster with drought
Rain scarcity threatens Spain's 3.6-billion-euro exports
JAEN, Spain (AFP) — In the scorching heat, Felipe Elvira inspects the branches of his olive trees, planted as far as the eye can see on a dusty hillside in southern Spain.
“There are no olives on these. Everything is dry,” the 68-year-old said.
He and his son own a 100-hectare olive farm in the southern province of Jaen in sun-drenched Andalusia, a region which produces the bulk of the country’s olive oil.
But a severe drought gripping much of Spain threatens to shrivel their harvest this year.
“We are used to a lack of water, but not to this point,” Elvira said.
The region used to get 800 liters of rainfall per square meter, but is set to get around half that amount this year, he said.
“Every year it’s worse,” Elvira said.
Global warming is hitting Spain harder than most European nations.
The country has suffered three intense heatwaves since May, damaging crops already grappling with an unusually dry winter.
“Olive trees are very resistant to water scarcity,” Juan Carlos Hervas, an expert with the COAG farmers’ union, said.
But when droughts become extreme, the trees “activate mechanisms to protect themselves. They don’t die but no longer produce anything,” he added.
‘Absolutely dramatic’
Hervas predicts the olive harvest from unirrigated land will come in at less than 20 percent of the average of the last five years.
The harvest from irrigated land will be just 50 to 60 percent of this average, he said.
But water reserves are dwindling.
Global warming is hitting Spain harder than most European nations.
The Guadalquivir river, which provides Andalusia with a large part of its water, is in “an absolutely dramatic situation” due to the lack of rain, Rosario Jimenez, a hydrology professor at the University of Jaen, said.
Reservoirs fed by the river are at just 30 percent of their capacity, according to Spain’s ecological transition ministry.
“Some are even at 10 percent capacity — that is practically dried up,” Jimenez said.
Farmers have also noticed changes in recent years.
“Not only does it rain less, but when it falls, it does so torrentially. The water flows without penetrating the earth,” Hervas said.
Parts of Portugal and Spain are the driest they have been in a thousand years due to an atmospheric high-pressure system driven by climate change, according to a study published this month in the journal Nature Geoscience.
The phenomenon is set to increase, jeopardizing crops like olives and grapes.
At stake is a key export: Spain supplies nearly half of the world’s olive oil. Its exports of this “green gold” are worth some 3.6 billion euros ($3.7 billion) per year.