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It’s hard for local producers to compete with European and Aussie oil. (Image: The Spinoff)
It’s hard for local producers to compete with European and Aussie oil. (Image: The Spinoff)

KaiOctober 9, 2024

Olive oil costs heaps at the moment. Can local producers come to the rescue?

It’s hard for local producers to compete with European and Aussie oil. (Image: The Spinoff)
It’s hard for local producers to compete with European and Aussie oil. (Image: The Spinoff)

A global shortage means imported olive oil is more costly than it’s been since the late 90s. Can local producers compete on price now? 

The past couple of years have seen olive oil prices spiking higher than a Mariah Carey top note. Heat waves and drought in the Mediterranean, particularly in Spain –  the country responsible for producing 40% of the world’s olives – caused global olive oil prices to shoot up to levels not seen since the last peak in 1997. 

A litre of Woolworths home-brand extra virgin olive oil (EVOO is the good stuff, FYI), made from 100% Spanish olives, now costs $18.70, compared to $12ish at the start of last year. It’s enough to have the tight-fisted among us crying hot tears into our stingily dressed salad. 

But what about the olive oil we produce locally? Can New Zealand producers of EVOO come to the rescue, restoring the ability of consumers to take home a bottle at a price that won’t make your eyes water? 

Since prices started skyrocketing midway through last year, New Zealand producers have seen a “huge increase” in demand for locally grown olive oil, according to Emma Glover, the executive officer of Olives New Zealand. “Next weekend, we’ve got our New Zealand olive oil awards, and a lot of the growers are going ‘Well actually, I’ve just about sold out of my oil already,’” Glover says. “We can’t keep up with demand at this point.” 

Many oils from New Zealand’s largest olive oil producer, Hawke’s Bay-based The Village Press, have been out of stock at supermarkets and online for months, but its website says new season oils are back in stock from early October.

Despite high demand for olive oil produced locally, New Zealand producers have a small share of the market here. “We produce less than 10% of the extra virgin olive oil that is consumed in New Zealand,” Glover continues, adding that this figure has been stable over time. “We’re pretty boutique, small producers.” 

What are the barriers preventing New Zealand producers from competing on price with imported oil? Chief among them is scale, says Ross Vintiner, who owns a medium-sized grove in Martinborough, producing Dali olive oil. “The problem with New Zealand is you’ve got a lot of small producers and very few large producers, and so you don’t get the economies of scale.” Large numbers of small growers face “very high costs around pruning and harvesting, and then they’ve got all the other compliance costs, like Food Safety”. 

Ross Vintiner harvesting olives. (Photo supplied)

There’s also competition from our familiar rival, the Aussies. Australians produce “very high-quality olive oil at scale”, Vintiner continues. “There are some growers in Australia who have millions of trees … and their whole operation is mechanical. So their unit costs per litre of olive oil are way below what we could produce.” As a result, Aussie olive oil is increasingly elbowing out European oil (let alone local stuff) on supermarket shelves. 

On top of this, workers are in short supply, and it’s hard to keep landowners interested in growing olives. Glover says higher and more immediate profits for crops like wine grapes and apples mean “some of our bigger groves in the last few years have been converted”.

‘He mea tautoko nā ngā mema atawhai. Supported by our generous members.’
Liam Rātana
— Ātea editor

So the chances of local producers being able to compete on price are low, even with the cost of European oils high by historical standards. But supermarket shoppers looking for rock bottom EVOO prices have never been the target market for local producers, and likely never will be; instead, they target the farmers-markets-and-Farro segment. 

Which leaves consumers with a couple of choices. One is to shell out more for local olive oil, which even if it can’t compete on price, is fresher than imported stuff and among the highest quality globally (Vintiner’s Dali oil has twice won the New York international olive oil competition – what he calls the Olympics of olive oil.) 

The other option, for the less discerning and/or flush consumer, is to switch to rice bran or sunflower oil while they wait for the price of imported olive oil to drop. “The good news for Spain is that this year they’ve had a good harvest,” Vintiner says. “So all predictions, by the futures market and everyone else, is that the price of extra virgin olive oil will actually drop.” 

By Glover’s guess, that’ll be around the end of this summer in Aotearoa. “Theoretically we should … start seeing the oil coming through around February,” Glover says, but in the meantime, not much can be done about the high prices. “It is what it is for this year.”

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Photo: Brandee Thorburn
Photo: Brandee Thorburn

KaiOctober 4, 2024

Why free school lunches matter – and what one group of students is doing to save them

Photo: Brandee Thorburn
Photo: Brandee Thorburn

A Year 11 social studies class at Waitākere College has been following David Seymour’s campaign to cut funding for free school lunches with interest, and launched a campaign of their own in response.

This is an excerpt from our food newsletter, The Boil Up.

In my past life as a high school teacher, I worked in schools with free lunches and schools without. As a beginning teacher in one of the latter – decile 4, and therefore just above the threshold for the scheme – I quickly learned to plan something low-key when I had my Year 12s after lunch. Why this class specifically? Well, because this school streamed, and we know streaming reflects socioeconomic status, so many of my low-stream seniors were from low-income families, struggling families, or had immensely complicated lives outside of school. These students were less likely to bring lunch to school, or to bring enough lunch to properly sustain their growing bodies and thinking brains. They weren’t being lazy or losing the plot during afternoon classes because they were bad or incapable. They would never admit it, but they were hungry.

Once I figured this out, I pivoted. On my meagre teacher salary, I began buying bags of bread rolls and cheese slices, packets of muesli bars and sacks of apples, all of which would disappear in minutes, save for a few apples. When I eventually moved to a school with Ka Ora, Ka Ako, I couldn’t believe the difference. Afternoon classes were still the worst, especially period five with the Year 10s right after PE, but they were nothing like what I’d experienced before. They were still teenagers, they still had their moments, but teenagers with full bellies can focus, can listen, can learn.

And there was such an abundance of kai. Instead of feeling sick with guilt whenever a student asked if I had any food when I didn’t, I could remind them they only had to hold out a little longer for lunch, or even hand them a mandarin or bag of Grain Waves from my cupboard – there were always leftover snacks which teachers were encouraged to take for their classrooms, or to offer in the tutorials or extra-curricular sessions we ran, or to eat ourselves.

I could write so much about the importance of this programme, but I think it’s more important to hear from the rangatahi on the ground. At Waitākere College, a Year 11 social studies class has been following David Seymour’s campaign to cut funding for free school lunches despite findings that the programme has had “profound impact on wellbeing”, and has taken action by starting the @wc_school.lunches campaign.

“The reason I feel passionate about this campaign is that I feel no student or person should go without food,” Hlaina Goffin (15) explains. “Free school lunches are the only food available to some students, so why should we take away or cut the budget to something that is helping the future people of the country?” Each day, the group take photos of students holding Seymour masks up and handwritten signs with slogans such as “PREVENT FOOD INSECURITY” and “#KEEPITHOT”, posting them to social media and tagging ministers. Many of the students pictured are clutching cardboard boxes containing the very kai they are seeking to protect: shepherd’s pie, butter chicken and rice, beef lasagne, fruit, muffins, cassava chips.

Phil Twyford, MP for Te Atatū, visits Waitākere College to support the campaign

When asked what inspired them to start this campaign, Gabrielle Manuhuia (15) cites her teacher, Ms Thorburn, who introduced the topic of food insecurity to their social studies class and ran an inquiry into the impacts of Ka Ora, Ka Ako, as well as another student at the school who had previously contacted local MP Phil Twyford about the cuts. Maia McQuoid (15) says the funding cuts make her “feel concerned for many of the students at Waitākere College who really enjoy these meals, but not just for them, also their families. Free warm meals have really lifted a weight off many parents and caregivers’ shoulders.”

“One of the main reasons the programme exists is to reduce child poverty, food insecurity and hunger. Hunger is said to put a child back four years behind their peers in school,” Jessica Brooker (15) explains. “Not having enough energy causes them to act up and not have the focus needed. So for children to be benefited by the food they eat at school, kids need to eat something healthy rather than junky.”

But it’s not just other tamariki and rangatahi these student activists are standing up for. Jessica is also concerned about how these cuts will impact the wider school community. “I joined this campaign after hearing that the FED employees (who provide food for us) were going to lose their jobs next year, due to the shift where food will come from a central source rather than from small businesses. My inspiration is the fact that people need jobs and are struggling, yet the government is taking jobs rather than providing opportunities.”

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