Editor’s Desk: In Greece, climate change is driving a rise in olive heists

By Brent Cunningham

Yesterday we took you to the Gulf Coast with a story about the latest struggles of the iconic redfish. Today we have a new piece, published in partnership with Bloomberg Businessweek, that takes you into the ancient olive groves of Greece. Olives have thrived for millennia in the warm, dry weather of the Mediterranean region. But as reporter Lauren Markham explains, climate change is upending that ancient relationship, spawning wildfires and wildly fluctuating temperatures that have cut into yields in the groves of Greece, Italy, and Spain, the world’s leading producers. Lower yields mean higher prices, and higher prices bring thieves, naturally. Greece has been especially hard-hit:    

Some of these heists were large in scale, such as the 37 tons of olive oil stolen in drums from a mill in Halkidiki, to the north. (That oil was worth more than $300,000 to the local growers cooperative.) Others, however, smacked less of Ocean’s Eleven and more of subsistence. On the island of Crete, a group of thieves crept into a man’s house and took more than 400 pounds of his personal olive supply. On the outskirts of Athens, farmers awoke to find their olive trees cut down overnight. Bags of fresh-cut olives disappeared from the fields before farmers had a chance to haul them to the mill.

Growers are responding, some with short-term measures such as cameras, nightly armed vigils, even microchipping branches. Others are taking the longer view and working to make their groves more resilient to climate change. One farmer told Markham that he “irrigates … farther from the trunk to encourage the roots to seek out moisture,” and plants new trees closer together so that the canopy helps maintain ground moisture. 

On one level, this is an economic story about climate change and its impact on an important crop. But it’s also a story about history and culture and the future of a way of life. Olives have grown in Greece for “just about all of recorded history,” Markham writes, and they are the “source of a reverence verging on the spiritual.” It makes it difficult for Greeks to imagine what might come after. 
Journalism of such depth and breadth doesn’t come cheap. Markham spent a week in Greece, traveling with a photographer. But we think such stories are worth it, and we hope you do, too. We still need to raise $10,000 as we start our new fiscal year. Please consider a donation to help fund FERN’s journalism.