AN aerial view of the hills near Cordoba in southern Spain reveals mile-upon-mile of the silver-grey foliage of olive trees. Last month Ms Loyola de Palacios, the Spanish Minister of Agriculture, invited European ambassadors, including Ireland's Mr Richard Ryan, to see this view and to show them how it would be in danger of extinction if EU legislation succeeded in destroying the world's largest olive growing area. In this rugged countryside, where the winters are bitterly cold, the summers suffocatingly hot and where rainfall is sparse, olive trees are virtually the only possible crop. Thousands of workers, mainly from Spain's pool of 300,000 day labourers, rely on the olives for their survival and fear that if the EU subsidy system is changed, they will lose their already precarious livelihood.
Last week about 50,000 began a march across Europe from Madrid to Strasbourg, Paris, Bonn and Brussels before ending yesterday in Amsterdam to draw attention to their plight.
EU Agriculture Commissioner, Mr Franz Fischler, believes he can eliminate fraud by subsidising each tree instead of the quantity of oil produced. But experts scoff at such ideas and claim they show Mr Fischler's lack of knowledge of olive oil production. "It costs them the same whether they subsidise the output or the tree," complains Mr Jose Alonso Cervilla of COAG, the farmers' union.
Some areas produce more oil per tree than others and destroying trees will not eradicate fraud, he says.
On a recent visit to the area with Ms Palacios, Mr Fischler proved his ignorance when he plucked an unripe olive from a tree and tried to eat it like a cherry. "Anyone knows that olives have to ripen and then be cured before you can eat them," sneered one farmer.
Spanish farmers blame the Italians for most of the fraud perpetrated in the industry. Spain produces 578,000 tonnes of olives per year as opposed to 502,000 tonnes grown in Italy, the largest olive oil producer in the world. But Italy's olive growers are usually small private producers.