French Olive Growers Told Their Future Is Organic
France’s olive industry body, Afidol, is urging French growers to convert to organic farming, arguing it is the only realistic way to compete with Spanish oil that costs a fifth as much to produce. Only 12 percent of French olive farms are organic so far. Here is the case Afidol made at last week’s organic olive conference in Montpellier, the numbers behind it, and what the organic label does and does not promise a buyer.
What Afidol said
The pitch came at the fourth conference on organic olive growing, organized by Afidol, the interprofessional association for French olives, with the Centre Technique de l’Olivier during the SITEVI trade fair in Montpellier on November 28. Afidol’s director, Christian Argenson, did not dress up the problem. Producing olive oil in France costs about €10 a liter, he said, against about €2 in Spain. French oil therefore sells for around €17 a liter on average, against €6 to €7 for Spanish.
| France vs Spain, per Afidol | France | Spain |
|---|---|---|
| Cost of production, per liter | About €10 | About €2 |
| Average selling price, per liter | About €17 | €6 to €7 |
| Share of olive farms that are organic | 12% | n/a |
France cannot win on volume. It is the fifth olive oil producer in the EU, with about 5,500 tons a year, and a large consumer. According to Afidol, olive oil is now the second most consumed vegetable oil in the country after sunflower, with 22 percent of the oil sold in supermarkets by volume and 41 percent by value. Most of that oil is imported.
Why organic, and why now
Argenson’s argument is that France’s position at the northern edge of the olive’s range is a handicap and an advantage at once. Less heat and sun mean lower yields. But the fruit is under less stress, he says, which gives oils with more expression and more intense fruitiness, and Olive Oil Times reports he also argued that French olives are less exposed to the olive fly. Put that together with the country’s protected designations (Nyons, Vallée des Baux-de-Provence, Aix-en-Provence, Haute-Provence, Nice, Corsica, Nîmes and Provence) and the organic AB logo, and French oil has a story to sell.
Organic does not let producers charge more than they already do, Argenson admits. What it does is make the oil easier to sell, especially in fine food shops and in target export markets such as the United Kingdom, Germany and Japan. Afidol has made a 15-minute video, introduced by its president Olivier Nasles, to walk growers through what the AB label means and how to protect a grove with fewer, carefully chosen inputs.
The grower’s view
Jean-Benoît Hugues, who grows at Les Baux-de-Provence and sits on Afidol’s technical committee, is a convert. He says the two big challenges of organic olive growing are the olive fly and the weeds. Against the fly he sprays a coating over the olives so the insects do not recognize the fruit, repeating after rain or strong wind. He does not expect organic conversion to make French oil much more expensive than it already is.
- Organic rules limit what a grower can spray, so a bad fly year hits harder.
- Weeds that a conventional grove would spray must be mown, grazed or worked by hand.
- In return, the grower gets a label that opens doors in the shops that pay best.
The organic logo certifies how the grove was farmed. It says nothing about when the olives were picked, how fast they were milled or how old the oil is, and those decide what is in your glass. A careless organic oil can be flat or defective; a careful conventional one can be superb. With French oil, the price already pays for small groves and hand work, so the question to ask is the same as always: which harvest, and which mill. Our note on what the organic label does and does not tell you applies to oil too.
Sources
- Olive Oil Times: French Growers Encouraged to Go Organic (December 4, 2013)
- Hotels Eco News: La bio, l’avenir de l’huile d’olive française (archived, in French)