Tunisia has been experiencing shortages for months. After flour, bread, milk, and butter, oil is now in short supply, which is quite unprecedented in a country that is one of the largest exporters of olive oil in the world. Meeting with a Tunisian producer, in Jendouba, in the northwest of the country, to try to better understand the situation.
It is in a pick-up that Leith Ben Becher tours his 180-hectare estate. “ You have olive trees on the right and on the left. It’s even more beautiful when the olive trees are loaded with their fruit,” he describes. This dandy farmer in his sixties likes to say that in his family, we have been picking olive trees since at least 1848: “Generally, we start picking around mid-November. This year I started around the second decade of December.”
Only around ten workers are active this morning, compared to fifty in good years. The cause was a drought that affected the entire Mediterranean basin and jeopardized the vintage of the year. “ Last year, we made around 20 tonnes of olives, this year, we risk only producing half,” laments the producer.
Soaring olive oil prices
Result: Olive oil prices have jumped 50% in one year in Tunisia. A situation that the executive takes very seriously. In mid-November, President Kaïs Saïed himself summoned several ministers, including that of the Interior. He calls for an immediate drop in prices.
Olive oil at 15 dinars per liter – or around 4.40 euros instead of the 7.40 euros on the market – is then sold. “ He asked, if we want to be kind, insistently to the producers that everyone put their hand in the tank, if I may say so, to make a sort of contribution… “voluntary”, but obligatory ”, comments the farmer.
Same skepticism at Louai Chebbi. At the head of Alert, an association that aims to popularize economic issues, he follows instructions from above with great circumspection. “I have the impression that the Tunisian authorities always intervene late about crises. We can no longer make firm decisions, but we carry out political communication around real economic questions. We cannot logically make anti-inflation injunctions. Inflation doesn’t work like that. Inflation depends on the supply and demand situation. When we do not support supply and production, it is normal to experience exorbitant prices.”
When contacted, neither the Tunisian Ministry of Agriculture nor the National Oil Office responded to our requests for interviews.
