Olive oil and almonds from Spain

The “Mediterranean diet” has been promoted extensively as a model of healthy and sustainable food consumption. It is characterized by a “high intake of extra virgin (cold pressed) olive oil, vegetables including leafy green vegetables, fruits, cereals, nuts and pulses/legumes, moderate intakes of fish and other meat, dairy products and red wine, and low intakes of eggs and sweets”[1] and its associated major health benefits, particularly reduced cardiovascular disease, and also environmental and economic benefits[2]. However, rather than wholesale shifts to this kind diet in high-consumption countries, there has been an increase in the consumption of conspicuous components of the Mediterranean diet, particularly olives, olive oil and almonds. Over the past decades, table olives, olive oil and almonds have become ubiquitous products on supermarket shelves and kitchen cupboards the world over. In Switzerland, consumption per capita has risen by 15% and 31% for almonds and olive oil, respectively (data from FAOSTAT). Both crops make an important contribution to Switzerland’s environmental and social impacts outside its borders (i.e. the sustainability impacts that are “embedded” in imports). In the case of olives, a large water footprint (due to expanding irrigation with vulnerable water resources) combined with overconsumption of oily foods in Switzerland, means the product is a major contributor to water-related impacts driven by environmental scarcity and biodiversity loss[3]. The water footprint of almonds drives an even larger share of water-related impacts for Swiss consumption.

Spain is the largest producer of both table olives and olive oil, with the area of olive plantations more than doubling from 1.15 million to 2.62 million ha between 1980 and 2020. The total harvest reached 8.13 million tonnes of table olives and 1.3 million tonnes of olive oil in 2020. Likewise, Spain is Europe’s leader in the production of almonds, with 416’950 tonnes harvested from 718’540 ha of land in 2020 (which expanded by 40% since 1980) [4]. At the same time, the economic situation for farmers has been increasingly difficult, with falling farm incomes across Spain driving mechanization and intensification of a previously integrated and diverse agroecosystems in an attempt to maintain productivity. This has caused the agrarian labour force to decline, while farm holdings increase in size along with inputs of material, nutrients, energy and other resources. While production and yields have soared, it has led to profound, negative impacts to non-human nature and agroecosystem services that are provided to wider society[5].

The agricultural and demographic transformations of rural areas, and the intensification of new agro-industrial zones cannot be carried out without the intervention on the part of the states, which are at the service of the liberal economy and which, under the logic of colonial domination, also oppress their own population at internal level. These are carried out to respond to the new demands of the global market and require large migratory flows to carry them out.

Andalusia, is pushed to be an underdeveloped territory. Since the 60's, its natural and human heritage serves greatly, the processes of growth of the urban areas of the spanish north and Europe. To stand out as a holiday destination and food production for exportation means that the region has a dependent economy, proper of the peripheral zones. Andalucia puts the land and the precariousness. The extractivism is not only in matter and energy, but also in its people.

The Alpujarra, located in the south east of Andalucía, is a territory in which the agrarian culture predominates in most of its extension through family farming, resulting in a mosaic of crops mainly formed by almond trees, olive trees, vines and fig trees. Because of its mountainous landscape and historic isolation, mechanization has not had a place, so the region behaves as a relict of old agrarian practices and community resource management. Nevertheless, The Alpujarra region has undergone radical transformations in recent years. The fall of agricultural prices in a progressively globalized market, new social aspirations and consumption patterns, emigration, aging of the local population and the absence of generational replacement have led to an unprecedented depopulation. The region is living through a process of deterritorialization. However, the people who resist, not effortlessly, continue to give life to a valuable community network, although increasingly fragile, which maintains and manages a cultural landscape with a lot of history.

At the other end of Andalusia, in the southwest of the iberian peninsula, the view is lost in olive crops. It takes place a worldwide example of "agro-industrialization". La Puebla de Cazalla is home to one of the most important olive farmers cooperatives in Spain, due to its large production volume, process efficiency and high product quality. Intensification and mechanization are perceived as the solution for the future, in the face of a global food system that turns food into just another commodity, marginalizing the reality of a very exhausted territory and its people who work very hard to take their land forward.