Faced with the seed oil crisis... the solution is at home

The seed oil market in Spain has been convulsed this March by a new situation, never known before and derived from the war in Ukraine, a situation that deserves a reflection from within.

In the balance of total consumption of fats in our country we will be missing around 400,000 tons of oil that will cease to be imported from Ukraine and to a lesser extent from Russia. We are referring to the sunflower oil that we traditionally import from that part of Europe and whose most frequent uses are its direct consumption in cooking, whether domestic or catering, and that destined for the agri-food industry with its use in processed foods, mainly packaged fried foods, and also in canned food. And beware that this situation will not be a matter of months, since this spring Ukraine already considers sunflower sowing as lost and therefore the situation will last at least 1.5 or 2 years.

Faced with this dilemma, operators in the fats market have had to look for alternatives to alleviate this supply-demand deficit. The first consequence has been that the price of sunflower oil, now a scarce commodity, has skyrocketed by as much as 300%, far exceeding €3/kg. Secondly, olive pomace oils, a natural substitute, and refined olive oils have also risen, although the increase has been much less intense than the previous one, starting from values close to 3 €/kg.

And thirdly, after a few weeks, a phenomenon as surprising as it is unnatural is taking place that should make us reflect: the entry of other seed oils such as rapeseed or canola, which have never been a consumption alternative in our country, is multiplying.

And therein lies the crux of the matter: Spain, on March 1, had a stock of olive oil (in its different categories) of more than 1,330,000 tons, and olive oil is the healthiest and richest fat of all known fats,

Why do we have to import at exorbitant prices oils foreign to our culture, such as rapeseed?
Why don't we supply ourselves with our own olive oil, being, as we are, the world leaders in production?
We call on Spanish bottlers to bottle our olive oils now more than ever, for three indisputable reasons:

1.  We have sufficient stocks with the largest cellar in the world.
2.  We are Mediterranean and olive oil is the essence of our diet.
3.  It is the healthiest, the most stable and the richest of all known oils.

Let us take advantage of this opportunity and serve the Spanish people tuna canned in olive oil, fried potatoes in olive oil and let us use our oil in all our stews, fried foods and preserves... in this way we will also contribute to the sustainability of our territories and our olive growers, and we will depend less and less on the convulsive international situations. Never a single shot could shoot down so many birds.