AFP
NOS Nieuws•vandaag, 22:56
Southern European countries have to contend with olive thieves who run away with their harvest. Due to periods of persistent heat and drought in the region, significantly fewer olives are picked, causing the value of the fruit to skyrocket. Prices have risen by 112 percent in one year. In Southern European countries, olives are compared to jewels and olive oil to liquid gold.
The most recent olive theft to cause a stir was in Spain. In the province of Seville took the police seized almost 74 tons of stolen olives today. The enormous load of stolen goods has a market value of approximately half a million euros.
Twelve people believed to have been involved in the theft were arrested in Pilas, west of the city of Seville. During the investigation into the thieves, officers discovered that the leader of the group delivered the olives to a buyer in Pilas at night. They immediately put them in the brine in his warehouse, so that they could be resold as inconspicuously as possible.
Jewelry theft
As the largest olive oil producer in the world, Spain accounts for approximately half of olive oil production. It is precisely here that the consequences of warming due to climate change have been felt hard in recent years. Last May, analysts sounded the alarm: due to the prolonged drought in Spain, olive oil production had almost halved compared to last year.
The Spanish police note in the statement about the discovery near Seville that these types of thefts have been reported more often recently. Earlier this week, three people were caught red-handed when they tried to steal a shipment of olives. “With current olive oil prices, stealing olive oil is like stealing jewelry,” a spokesperson for an olive oil producer told Reuters.
Tens of thousands of liters stolen
Olive thieves are also making their mark in Greece, it became apparent yesterday. In Polygyros, in the northeast of the country, thieves made off with tens of thousands of liters of olive oil. They probably tapped the barrels in the olive oil cooperative’s department store over several days. The total damage is estimated at around 370,000 euros.
Just like in Spain, the Greek olive harvest has suffered greatly from the weather extremes of recent summers. The oil is becoming sold out in more and more places and the extreme heat and a fruit fly plague are expected to cost the Greeks about a third of their total olive oil production this year.
2023-10-06 20:56:31
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