Maybe, like climate change, it’s creeping up on us and we don’t feel its day-to-day impact, but according to an unscientific survey of shoppers and suppliers, the rising cost of olive oil hasn’t been noticed or at least had an impact.
“Our Italian olive oil comes from Sicily, which wasn’t affected,” said Trisha LeVatte, whose daughter Michaelanne Buckley Dodds owns the Vancouver Olive Oil Company on West Broadway in Kits. “Our olives come from Spain, California, Portugal, all over, we’re waiting for the Southern Hemisphere harvest. So we rarely see a significant effect on our business.”
It is a $1.5-billion “crisis without precedent,” according to Coldiretti, an Italian farmers’ association. As the Olive Oil Times put it in a worldwide survey of olive farmers March 13: “In Australia it was drought. In France there was too much rain. U.S. farmers said excessive heat was a major cause. In Greece it was the olive fruit fly.Oreskovic said she hasn’t noticed a spike in cost from her supplier, Oakland, Calif.,-based Veronica Bradley.