Does an olive oil shortage reflect bigger risks to Canada’s food supply chain?

Wholesalers of olive oil in Canada say the global shortage of the oil has been felt in Canada, too, with consumers and restaurants feeling the pinch.

For the last nine months, Emilio Pulla has been checking for weather updates in Italy. The reason Pulla, a Toronto-based wholesaler, is hoping for rain halfway across the world is that the lack of it — and the resulting hit to olive trees, and their buds — has been hurting his business.

“There were rumblings around nine months ago because the heat wave in Italy basically decimated the flowers,” he told Global News, “It was probably one of the worst ones we’ve seen in a long, long time.”

But the pressures have not eased. Geneviève Grossenbacher, director of policy at the Ottawa-based Farmers for Climate Solutions, said climate change is to blame.

“It’s mostly due to extreme weather, extreme heat waves and lack of rainfall,” she said.

Copernicus, the EU’s climate monitoring body, said in April that Europe is increasingly facing “bouts of heat so intense that the human body cannot cope, as climate change continues to raise temperatures.”

That includes countries like Spain and Italy, the largest and second largest producers of olive oil, respectively. Spain alone accounts for 40 per cent of the world’s production, but both are facing supply strains sending the costs of olive oil skyrocketing.

Pulla said those shocks have Canadian consumers feeling the pinch.

“It’s more than doubled,” he said. “I feel for the restaurants because people start cutting back when it gets expensive.”