Record-Breaking Freeze On Heels Of Drought Crushes Spanish Olive Groves

[hatrack]

CAMBIL, Spain - The anxiety in this town begins to make sense after a short drive up the main road, as the homes and plazas give way to orchards with seemingly endless rows of olive trees. Trees that normally sag with hundreds of pounds of fruit at this time of year are largely barren, holding little more than a handful of olives, many no bigger than peas. Some trees have dried up and shriveled, their brittle leaves breaking in the wind. Others have been cut to stumps to preserve their sap in hopes they will regenerate.

The groves that have sustained this region for centuries and helped turn it into the richest source of olive oil in the world have been decimated by circumstances that few here thought possible. A record-breaking freeze last winter was followed by a drought that has been described as the worst to hit Spain in 60 years. The combination has been devastating to this town of 3,000 residents in the mountain ranges of Jaén, a southern province that is slightly larger than Connecticut and produced about 20 percent of the world's olive oil last year - almost as much as Italy's entire output. Whether oil producers elsewhere will make up for this year's drop in supply from Jaén is not yet clear, but the effects on towns like Cambil are likely to be profound.

Practically every family in Cambil owns olive trees, two or three hundred on average, residents say. The town, which has the slightly unkempt look of a community more focused on its orchards than itself, has a couple of groceries, a bar or two, a pharmacy and three olive oil factories. But this year there is little fruit to feed the factories. "This is a catastrophe," said Juan Castro, 77, a retired farmer. "Without olives, we have nothing." He was speaking of Cambil, but he could have been speaking just as easily about dozens of similar towns in the mountains of Jaén. The gravity of the problem extends far beyond this year's harvest. Since badly damaged groves can take 5 or even 10 years to regain full productivity, it may be a decade before the towns recover, if they ever do, agricultural experts say.

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Residents have relied on the trees and fruit for centuries, sometimes in unexpected ways. The trees marked the borders between Muslim and Christian Spain in the Middle Ages. They provided refuge for residents fleeing aerial bombardments in the Spanish Civil War in the 1930's, and food during the hungry decade that followed. "The olive tree is life for us," said Antonia García Espinosa, 73, who was born in Cambil and has never lived anywhere else. During the civil war, Mr. Martínez's great-grandfather took refuge from the bombs inside the concave trunk of one of the oldest trees in the family's orchard, he said, adding, "Many people in Jaén have stories like that." The trees have thrived so well, so long, that residents have failed to consider other crops or industries, assuming that olives would always be reliable. Now few towns know how to attract new businesses.

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http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/03/international/europe/03spain.html

[phantom power]

1. The increasing frequency of stories like this is unnerving.

[Dogmudgeon]

2. Eurasia has been getting hammered since the 1990s

Those of us who live in North America have been spared the brunt of the climate changes, although this year's hurricanes and the late tornado outbreak this past weekend may be signs that our charmed existence is about to end.

Thermohaline climate regulation theories have usually implied that Europe and Asia would be the first areas to suffer climate change; it looks like that's exactly what's happening. This winter's weather anomalies in North America should be of great interest.

--p!

[Boomer]

3. World War III

The battle for arable land and potable water.