Speaker 1: Today, we're going to discuss two unique but ubiquitous fruits
Speaker 1: that have been part of staple diets around the world
Speaker 1: for a very long time. We're first going to discuss
Speaker 1: what might be considered the world's only seafaring fruit, and
Speaker 1: we're going to travel to India to learn about its
Speaker 1: nomadic origins and what it's growing global popularity means for
Speaker 1: local farmers in Southeast Asia. Next stop, we meet wet
Speaker 1: Stone co founder Melissa she in Spain, where she is
Speaker 1: reintroduced to another familiar fruit that is being harvested, green
Speaker 1: and unripe, and it is used to produce one of
Speaker 1: the world's most ancient natural cooking oils. As we follow
Speaker 1: these familiar culinary commodities on their journey from their place
Speaker 1: of origin to our kitchens and plates, we learned about
Speaker 1: honoring the origins and how markets, supply, and demand are
Speaker 1: shaping the futures of these crops today. On point of origin,
Speaker 1: join us as we dive deep into the world of
Speaker 1: culinary commodities. It's the Fruit Edition, and we're exploring some
Speaker 1: of the curious conundrums that they face today. But they
Speaker 1: can stay alive. The seeds stays alive while it floats,
Speaker 1: so it floats on the seas and it sprouts on
Speaker 1: whatever coasted lands, on tropical coasted lands on In southeastern India,
Speaker 1: organic farmer and permaculturalist Symritate Molly started noticing that farmers
Speaker 1: in her area, we're beginning to experiment with a new
Speaker 1: type of crop which historically wasn't grown in the area
Speaker 1: because it was at too high of an altitude. I'm
Speaker 1: in the mountain in the Palony Hills of South India,
Speaker 1: so it's quite high and I run out coop with
Speaker 1: the farmers, with the local farmers in my village and
Speaker 1: consim rates farming community. The effects of climate change over
Speaker 1: the past few years have been immediate and apparent. Basically,
Speaker 1: the mountains have been getting warmer and warmer, and so
Speaker 1: every year the coconut kind of climbs higher and higher,
Speaker 1: so the coconut can grow at a higher altitude. And
Speaker 1: the local farmers in my area were noticing this. And
Speaker 1: where it's colder now it's getting warmer, so it's easier
Speaker 1: for a coconut to grow there. Basically, coconuts are really
Speaker 1: hardy plants and they'll grow anywhere they have a temperature
Speaker 1: of higher than twenty two degrees celsius. So the farmers
Speaker 1: in my area were starting to experiment growing coconuts in
Speaker 1: our area, trying to predict the future and the fact
Speaker 1: that it's going to get warmer. So that's what made
Speaker 1: me interested in researching where coconuts were from and the
Speaker 1: kind of conditions they need to grow. So the origins
Speaker 1: of coconut are kind of murky, and there wasn't the
Speaker 1: any test that was done. It couldn't pinpoint any one origin.
Speaker 1: There were two strains that were found. One was from
Speaker 1: the Indian Ocean and the other was on the Pacific Ocean,
Speaker 1: so it was really divided across two oceans, which connects
Speaker 1: with the fact that the coconut is a seafaring fruit.
Speaker 1: I think it's one of the only ones in the world.
Speaker 1: So the coconut has been traveling on the oceans around
Speaker 1: the world for millennia before humans have been traveling. Definitely,
Speaker 1: and contrary to popular belief, it's we don't have colonizers
Speaker 1: to thank for the coconuts. But yeah, so I like
Speaker 1: to call it a seafood. That's interesting. So when you
Speaker 1: say that it's a seafaring fruit, you mean that coconuts
Speaker 1: without the help of humans, can propagate on the water.
Speaker 1: Is that right, Yeah, they have been propagating on on water.
Speaker 1: They can. They can stay alive. The seeds stays alive
Speaker 1: while it floats. It also floats, so it floats on
Speaker 1: the seas and it sprouts on whatever coasted lands on
Speaker 1: tropical coasted lands on Coconuts are so unique because of
Speaker 1: their seafaring nature. They can be found throughout the global South,
Speaker 1: having self propagated along shorelines over thousands of years, likely
Speaker 1: long before humans were even around. Today, they firmly planted
Speaker 1: into local and regional cuisines in South Asia, making coconuts
Speaker 1: foundational and a stable not only in diets as a
Speaker 1: way of life in coastal India, the Philippines and Indonesia
Speaker 1: the top producers of coconut in the world. The coconut
Speaker 1: plant provides more than just meat, milk, and oils for
Speaker 1: food and sustenance. So it's typically an island house would
Speaker 1: have around for coconut trees and you can build your
Speaker 1: house and make your clothes and have fuel, water, food, alcohol.
Speaker 1: Everything started for you with those trees. So it's known
Speaker 1: as the tree of life, and it's very easy to
Speaker 1: have a self sustainable lifestyle with these four coconuts, so
Speaker 1: it's worshiped. Basically, in the India, we use a coconut
Speaker 1: in all our rituals. The coconut is cracked before you
Speaker 1: start anything new, or get married or any of the
Speaker 1: like life's big moments. So it's a symbol of fertility,
Speaker 1: the womb. But it's also a symbol of your ego
Speaker 1: as all as your head. So it's like your sacrificing
Speaker 1: your ego. Every time you break a coconut, it signifies
Speaker 1: it or your your head or your ego. Basically, I
Speaker 1: sort of like that image. It's a pretty intense one.
Speaker 1: The idea of the coconut representing your head and then
Speaker 1: being machett id open to get to the flesh. That's
Speaker 1: sort of the ultimate sacrifice. I guess, yeah it is.
Speaker 1: It is so basically they used to sacrifice. I don't
Speaker 1: know if you want to say this day of but
Speaker 1: they used to sacrifice people and animals in the old days.
Speaker 1: But instead of instead of sacrificing them, they break a coconut.
Speaker 1: So the blood and the water coming out the fresh coconut,
Speaker 1: so it looks like the head. Wow, I will never
Speaker 1: eat another coconut without thinking about that. Um, that's that's
Speaker 1: pretty amazing. So I want to ask you again or
Speaker 1: go back to you know, the role of the coconuts.
Speaker 1: I guess, not really the role, but like the sudden
Speaker 1: demand over the last five years. As a consumer, it
Speaker 1: seems to me, if I had to guess, I would
Speaker 1: say that the trend of the health conscious types who
Speaker 1: are drinking coconut water on a daily basis, sometimes around
Speaker 1: the clock, is coconut water. What we have to blame
Speaker 1: for this sudden spike in demand? Yeah, I think so.
Speaker 1: I mean I was doing some research. I found that
Speaker 1: the top players in the globle coconut water market is Vita, Coco,
Speaker 1: Google Cola, and PepsiCo. So I mean they have huge
Speaker 1: marketing apartments and budgets, so they're shifting to something I
Speaker 1: guess that's more health conscious, but the whole system is
Speaker 1: still the same rate, So I don't know how healthy
Speaker 1: that actually is. We may have all noticed and prescribed
Speaker 1: to the boom and foods, oils and drinks, not to
Speaker 1: mention supplements that are derived from the coconut beyond just
Speaker 1: coconut water. Large corporate, multinational food producers are scrambling to
Speaker 1: keep pace with the rapidly growing demand and global taste
Speaker 1: for all things coconut. The problem has become because prices
Speaker 1: around the world have increased so much because of its
Speaker 1: it's like trendy now, so people wanna make money off it.
Speaker 1: Coconut is a very sensitive tree, and because of the
Speaker 1: mono cropping, and because of the fact that they're probably
Speaker 1: putting fertilizers and petrochemicals to help the coconut grow, the
Speaker 1: land of the soil is getting depleted and the productivity
Speaker 1: of the tree has become almost less than it was
Speaker 1: thirty years ago. So the major problem around the world
Speaker 1: is that the countries and plantations that have been supplying
Speaker 1: coconut around the world are now producing less and less
Speaker 1: of it, which is why the price of coconut oil
Speaker 1: is rising as it is an almost in the past
Speaker 1: five years wow. And so the cost of the coconut
Speaker 1: has gone up as the levels of production have decreased.
Speaker 1: Is that what you're saying, Yeah, yeah, the demand is
Speaker 1: way higher than the supply, which means that now those
Speaker 1: four coconuts that a family has on an island, they
Speaker 1: would rather sell it and get money and buy those
Speaker 1: clothes and fuel from somewhere else instead of using the
Speaker 1: coconut they have. I mean, I'm a bit of an extremist.
Speaker 1: There's no real solution to the food supply chain around
Speaker 1: the world, and I don't believe that it's wrong for
Speaker 1: Americans or anyone in the global not to use coconut,
Speaker 1: But I just think that just going local is just
Speaker 1: the easiest solution. So of course, now coconuts are not
Speaker 1: seafaring anymore. They don't propagate themselves, so they're not flowing
Speaker 1: on the sea and landing up on coursts and planting themselves.
Speaker 1: So they're being planted in huge monocrops, plantations in the
Speaker 1: areas where they are traditionally grown. So it's kind of
Speaker 1: getting to the place where palm oil is. We're moving
Speaker 1: a large rainforests are natural um landscape. It's to grow
Speaker 1: coconut because of how how much money they get you
Speaker 1: through exports. It's a twofold thing. So because of global warming,
Speaker 1: we can grow more coconuts and higher places, and not
Speaker 1: necessarily just by the coast, but also where they've already
Speaker 1: traditionally been growing. They aren't yielding as much coconut as
Speaker 1: they used to. Because of the way that they're being grown.
Speaker 1: We'll be right back with wet Stone co founder Melissa
Speaker 1: she him Hice. Even mal is my business partner and
Speaker 1: the co founder of wet Stone. She's in and Lucia,
Speaker 1: Spain to introduce us to the farmers and the community
Speaker 1: that have been growing the fruit bearing trees from our
Speaker 1: next story for many generations. How are these growers balancing
Speaker 1: innovating while also preserving tradition and honoring origin, especially in
Speaker 1: an industry that many think of it's just a commodity.
Speaker 1: Here in the sea of trees. We're standing on soil
Speaker 1: that is a deep brick red. It's crumbly clay like
Speaker 1: infused with the color of rust. And when you look up,
Speaker 1: all that meets I is this continuous canopy of leaves
Speaker 1: that are crowning these noveley branches and tree trunks of
Speaker 1: the olive tree. You don't have to look too closely
Speaker 1: to see that each canopy is dotted with the unripe
Speaker 1: greens and darker blacks of maturing fruit. And just to
Speaker 1: give you an example, like one tree, one olive tree
Speaker 1: is maybe a case of of of olive oil. Only
Speaker 1: one tree. It's just one case bottles. That's it nine ms.
Speaker 1: So it takes a lot of trees to make a
Speaker 1: lot of olive oil. One lot is usually around on
Speaker 1: twenty tho liters. Okay, so you need to be moving
Speaker 1: quickly unloading. They're ali's depending on the quality of the
Speaker 1: olive or the variety of the olive. Today, the morning
Speaker 1: sky is calm, bright and luminous, while at the same
Speaker 1: time being completely blanketed by airy and pillowy clouds. There's
Speaker 1: a skyhike cover that is so vast and high up
Speaker 1: in the atmosphere that makes the sprawling landscape we're standing
Speaker 1: in feel all at once both smaller and a little
Speaker 1: more comprehensible, but also grander and of an unimaginable scale.
Speaker 1: We're here amongst the olive groves of Hlio is STEPA
Speaker 1: with Kyle Davis, an expert manager and an expert in
Speaker 1: regional olive oil production. We're harvesting olives here in Andalusia,
Speaker 1: and we're meeting one of the five thousand farmers that
Speaker 1: Kyle works with. It's almost mid day, but it still
Speaker 1: feels like dawn is breaking and the day is not
Speaker 1: quite fully emotion But then stillness is abruptly broken by
Speaker 1: the sounds of an early harvest in full swing. So
Speaker 1: they'll grab the tree with the tractor on the with
Speaker 1: like kind of a fork on the bottom, and then
Speaker 1: they open up this batman upside down umbrella underneath the tree.
Speaker 1: They shake the tree with that fork. All of the
Speaker 1: olives fall into the umbrella and go right into a hopper.
Speaker 1: Once the oppera is full, the hopper dumps it into
Speaker 1: a trailer. Once the trailer full, the trailer goes to
Speaker 1: the mill. One farmer brings a trailer to the mill.
Speaker 1: He's going to first check in with a computer screen
Speaker 1: and he's gonna scan his ID badge. His ID badge
Speaker 1: is going to pull up a plot of his land,
Speaker 1: and he's gonna indicate on the computer exactly where he
Speaker 1: just harvested. Traceability starting to be not just the farmer,
Speaker 1: but the actual plot of land that he just harvested from.
Speaker 1: The day drop the alive the olives like we saw
Speaker 1: being collector's gonna happital piece of sticks. This ability to
Speaker 1: trace fruit back to the original plot of land it
Speaker 1: was harvested from is one of the factors that makes
Speaker 1: old a step as so unique. The farmers details on
Speaker 1: its harvest of the day are one of numerable inputs
Speaker 1: and bits of data that Old As Stepa's oils mills
Speaker 1: carefully monitor each step of the process, from when an
Speaker 1: olive arrives at the mill to the process of cold
Speaker 1: extraction of oil, to testing for different physical and chemical properties,
Speaker 1: storage and bottling, makes the process here perhaps one of
Speaker 1: the most advanced in the world. The olive groves at
Speaker 1: ol Stepa, like the one being harvested here today, have
Speaker 1: an ancient history dating back more than two millennia, but
Speaker 1: it is in more recent history. Over the last half century,
Speaker 1: the agriculture and the region has been revolutionized and technologized,
Speaker 1: allowing producers like ol Stepa to access the most up
Speaker 1: to date oil extraction machinery. At the heart of ole
Speaker 1: As Stepa's business lies an approach to all of farming
Speaker 1: that is very different from the models we see around
Speaker 1: the world. The cooperative model in Spain is pretty unique.
Speaker 1: I don't think that there's any other country in the
Speaker 1: world that's really has as many cooperatives as Spain and
Speaker 1: really has such a country that's so open to cooperation,
Speaker 1: not just on like an agricultural level, but on a
Speaker 1: on a citizen level. I mean there's I mean people
Speaker 1: here in Spain, I would say, you know, two thirds
Speaker 1: of the population at one time or another has been
Speaker 1: a volunteer or collaborates with NGO. Spain is a very
Speaker 1: is a society that likes to cooperate and and assets.
Speaker 1: They have a lot of cooperatives and that's very different
Speaker 1: than countries like Italy, for example, in terms of olive oil,
Speaker 1: and there's no there's no there's no real olive oil
Speaker 1: cooperatives in Italy. There's a lot of small farmers or
Speaker 1: medium sized farmers that own their own small mill. But
Speaker 1: the cool thing about having an olive oil cooperative is
Speaker 1: is that you join the efforts of a large amount
Speaker 1: of people who individually wouldn't be able to afford an
Speaker 1: olive mail and you all milt together and you're all
Speaker 1: kind of in the same boat, and you all kind
Speaker 1: of follow the same philosophy. And the cool thing with
Speaker 1: ely a stepans like our flow has been quality driven,
Speaker 1: and that's not necessarily the cooperative model. Across Spain. In
Speaker 1: terms of olive oil, we have kind of everything. We
Speaker 1: have small family farmers that might own only you know,
Speaker 1: maybe fifteen or twenty actors, and then we have larger
Speaker 1: farmers who have been we have inherited land over various
Speaker 1: generations and in our farming actors, so we have kind
Speaker 1: of have everything in between. But they're all in the
Speaker 1: same boat, you know, and they're all fighting for excellence. Okay.
Speaker 1: So we pay our farmers much more money for the
Speaker 1: per kilo of olive than any other cooperative in Spain,
Speaker 1: and that's undisputable. As Kyle explains, their concept is really simple.
Speaker 1: Olio a step overpaced farmers for early harvest oil, so
Speaker 1: that growers are incentivised to get olives off the tree
Speaker 1: and into the mill as quickly as possible. And why
Speaker 1: is it that more unripe and greener olives produce the
Speaker 1: higher quality oil. And the most important factor, I'd say
Speaker 1: there is the time of harvest. And so as the
Speaker 1: olive tree produces a flower and the flower gets pollinated
Speaker 1: and the olive sprouts on the branch, it starts off green, okay,
Speaker 1: and it it's green. And as it growing and it's green,
Speaker 1: and it makes it reaches its maximum size. And as
Speaker 1: it reaches its maximum size, and as it starts to
Speaker 1: mature more, it turns from green to purple to black, okay,
Speaker 1: and then it falls off the tree. The maximum fat
Speaker 1: content of the olive is going to be when it's
Speaker 1: almost ready to fall off the tree. But the amount
Speaker 1: of polyphenols, the amount of fruit that you're going to
Speaker 1: get out of that olive are going to be lower
Speaker 1: than if you were to harvest it earlier. And so
Speaker 1: that's what you see early harvest and earlier, you know,
Speaker 1: on bottles, etcetera. Harvesting early, you get less fat, you
Speaker 1: get less oil out of the olive, but the quality
Speaker 1: is a lot higher. So what exactly are these polyphenols
Speaker 1: that Kyle is talking about. They are the micro nutrients
Speaker 1: that give olive oils it's so called superpowers. Green olives especially,
Speaker 1: are rich and polyphenols that we can only get through
Speaker 1: certain plant based foods, and together with other dietary reducing
Speaker 1: agents such as vitamin C and vitamin E, are referred
Speaker 1: to as antioxidants. Higher polyphenols also increase the shelf life
Speaker 1: of olive oil, but are a key factor in contributing
Speaker 1: to the most defining and desired flavor factor of high
Speaker 1: quality olive oil. Bitterness, by the way, the one and
Speaker 1: only basic flavor in oil is bitterness. The rest is
Speaker 1: have to taste like all the aromas and tag tile sensations,
Speaker 1: like the stringency and dry our mouth and spiciness that
Speaker 1: we can feel anywhere in the mouth or maybe in
Speaker 1: the throat. Even this is Alfonso Fernandez something in a
Speaker 1: kind of joke. Away, I can say that I'm a
Speaker 1: priest of olive oil, so I I make believers. I
Speaker 1: want to tell too, for the people to know what
Speaker 1: is the truth about olive oil and everything that they
Speaker 1: can learn and enjoy and how to use and how
Speaker 1: good is for the health everything, because I hate national
Speaker 1: listm on on olive oil, even if I'm lucky enough
Speaker 1: to be they're talking about olive oil or from a
Speaker 1: spin all over the world. But I mean many of
Speaker 1: the love trees that we have, they have been with
Speaker 1: us longer than many borders that we have to We
Speaker 1: have folive trees with more than two thousand, three thousand
Speaker 1: years old. Alfonso has devoted himself to sharing knowledge and
Speaker 1: understanding of olive oil, it's history and its cultural heritage
Speaker 1: here in Spain and beyond the borders that define his country.
Speaker 1: He's what's called an oleologist, the name for an olive
Speaker 1: oil tasting expert. Importantly, Alfonso emphasizes that what makes olive
Speaker 1: oil really unique is not just that it's an ancient product,
Speaker 1: but that it's a completely all natural product. After all,
Speaker 1: Spanish aciet for oil is derived from Arabic azayet or
Speaker 1: olive juice. It's unlike many of our cooking oils today
Speaker 1: that go through different refining processes. But the main thing
Speaker 1: that nothing that everybody will understand quite easily. Extraorginally oil
Speaker 1: is real food. So he's the fatty juice of a fruit.
Speaker 1: So all the extracted by mechanical means, so the end
Speaker 1: it's like a juice, but releasing the water. I mean
Speaker 1: it has natural polyphonos that is a natural antioxidant. The
Speaker 1: people that they don't like the bitterness, the bitterness is
Speaker 1: one of the best antioxidants that we have. And these
Speaker 1: are the kind of things that the oly world will
Speaker 1: bring to us that not many other facts that is
Speaker 1: going to give us. His family has been farming in
Speaker 1: the northern region of Andalusia for generations. As you know,
Speaker 1: I'm I'm part of olive wall farmers family. My brothers
Speaker 1: are still around the family farming with olive trees. My
Speaker 1: uncle's my grandpa. He got retired with seventy two years
Speaker 1: old from the farming. So I've being devoted to this
Speaker 1: for a long long time since fift generations far Us
Speaker 1: I know and for me, olive all is a big,
Speaker 1: big passion. We have to we have to give them
Speaker 1: much more than we usually give because some people they
Speaker 1: consider this a commodity. And I think that they've been
Speaker 1: with us for so long time that we need to
Speaker 1: give respect. That is what they've given to us. The
Speaker 1: other world. Yes, it's in I. I come from my
Speaker 1: small village that is called Montea's almost in the center
Speaker 1: of Andalusia geographical center, and Aluthia is like if you're
Speaker 1: bend over Portugal, but to cross over Spain. And it's
Speaker 1: the largest production area in the world. When I say
Speaker 1: the largest, is the only my region or Spain, but
Speaker 1: I think that is the largest. The olive crops, the
Speaker 1: olive trees planted in Spain is the largest artificial olive
Speaker 1: grove olive forest in the world. That's my thought. Alfonso's
Speaker 1: family farm is located in Cordoba, the province of Andalusia,
Speaker 1: which along with neighboring province Jayenne, produces thirty of the
Speaker 1: entire world's production. That's a lot of olive trees. And
Speaker 1: Alusia is the most populous area in Spain and has
Speaker 1: a temperate climate with hot, dry summers and mild winters
Speaker 1: that has made it an agricultural haven for thousands of years.
Speaker 1: No one knows exactly where the olive tree originated, but
Speaker 1: has been naturalized to the Mediterranean basin, including here in
Speaker 1: Andy Lucia and across Spain, flourishing on uncultivated lands for millennia.
Speaker 1: Farmers over generations have bred and propagated plants for culinary uses,
Speaker 1: developing cultivars that flourish in their local to war, which
Speaker 1: has led to the thousands of different varietals and the
Speaker 1: world see today. In Spain alone, there are actually hundreds
Speaker 1: of types of olives. We have two farms. One is
Speaker 1: in here in Montalvande, Corlova, and the other one is
Speaker 1: very close to Cordova, to Cordova village. It is not
Speaker 1: a big surface. In total is about sixty actors more
Speaker 1: or less. And yes, and we treated with a lot
Speaker 1: of respect with pequala and Arbkina varieties, and pequala has
Speaker 1: been with us for centuries here and pequal is one
Speaker 1: of the varieties. We have been explained in Spain more
Speaker 1: than more than three hundred varieties all over the world
Speaker 1: more than one thousand, and each variety is like a
Speaker 1: different flavor profile and the friend behavior. It's like we're
Speaker 1: talking about wine, like different types of grapes. The flavors
Speaker 1: and characteristics of each olive as well as its appearance
Speaker 1: is completely unique. Alfonso walks us through how to taste
Speaker 1: olive oil and how you might process the flavors. Unlike wine,
Speaker 1: extra virgin olive oil is the only food product that
Speaker 1: has to undergo a tasting test, highly systemic and tightly
Speaker 1: controlled panel in order to be classified or named as
Speaker 1: extra virgin olive oil, which is part of what Alfonso does.
Speaker 1: Something that's important to mention about Alfonso is that he's
Speaker 1: not just an oleologist, He's also a wine teaster. In Spain.
Speaker 1: I have to tell you that I'm not only a
Speaker 1: olive oid taster, I am also wine taster. Um. I'm
Speaker 1: in a panel test of three determinations of origin here
Speaker 1: in Spain. I have a w c T three level
Speaker 1: three cores already passed, and so I know what is
Speaker 1: to taste wine and then now what is to is
Speaker 1: the olive oil. And it's not better or worst. I
Speaker 1: mean you have less steps on tasting olive oil, but
Speaker 1: you need to know how to taste the olive oil.
Speaker 1: And I want to make it very simple and and
Speaker 1: you can. You can think about tasting olive oil like
Speaker 1: dancing the bowls. You know that abowts is one to three, one,
Speaker 1: two threes every every time every time they sends steps,
Speaker 1: So tasting olivel is basically the same. So first step
Speaker 1: is the intensity of roma. We call that fruitness can
Speaker 1: be robust, medium or low. Then we have the second
Speaker 1: one that is what type of roma we are getting
Speaker 1: out of that olivel. And that is the main thing
Speaker 1: because it has to remind us always too alive things
Speaker 1: on the nature. So an extrovergin only oil has to
Speaker 1: remind us always to something that is alive and fresh.
Speaker 1: If it's musty, if it's fermented, if it's run seed,
Speaker 1: if it's it's not going to be a good property
Speaker 1: for the extra regin level. And then the third step
Speaker 1: is when you put in your mouth, and that is
Speaker 1: quite relevant because they have to taste for human is
Speaker 1: quite quite important. Something really important is that we have.
Speaker 1: We need to salibrate properly in the mouth. When we
Speaker 1: taste olible, we just take a little zip, not that
Speaker 1: much so that one we salibrate, we motion it. We
Speaker 1: make a kind of like when you're tasting wine, you
Speaker 1: inhale summer. In the olive oil, we do the same
Speaker 1: but a little bit more sharply, let's say a little
Speaker 1: bit more aggressive. But if you're not used to do that,
Speaker 1: we make a kind of noise. I don't know if
Speaker 1: the people will be able to recognize it on the podcast,
Speaker 1: but it's going to be something like that. Can I
Speaker 1: do it? Yes, it's a kind of zip's it's like
Speaker 1: you in here somewhere. And if you don't know how
Speaker 1: to do that, because the problem of that is that
Speaker 1: you have to cut quite aggressively. It just tumble it
Speaker 1: down with your tongue and keep the olivel in your
Speaker 1: mouth about thirty seconds or forty five seconds and enjoyed,
Speaker 1: enjoy it, and then you'll solow it up. And you
Speaker 1: know what happens if you solow up too quickly, that
Speaker 1: is going to have much more spiciness than what it
Speaker 1: really has. And people is quite sensitive to a spineness
Speaker 1: along with the flavor ideas of grain and of nature
Speaker 1: and life and of spiciness. One flavor profile that we
Speaker 1: come back to you is a taste of bitterness. This
Speaker 1: is an olive oil flavor that some might find unfamiliar,
Speaker 1: perhaps stark, but for olive oil, it's actually a defining characteristic.
Speaker 1: This bitterness is an indication of a high level of polyphenols,
Speaker 1: specifically flavoroid polyphenols that give us this taste. In fact,
Speaker 1: the absence of bitterness in olive oil is what defines
Speaker 1: it to be a sweet olive oil. Yes, it is
Speaker 1: like in wine. They have the they have the Channin's
Speaker 1: is exactly the same one that we have in the
Speaker 1: olivel that is making that bitterness, and the bitterness comes
Speaker 1: from the variety. Not every oil has bitterness. When there's
Speaker 1: no bitterness on the olivel, we call it, we name
Speaker 1: it as a sweet olive oild. That for the people
Speaker 1: that is not used to that bitterness and they don't
Speaker 1: know how to play with that on on the kitchen,
Speaker 1: they can use a variety that we call sweet so
Speaker 1: they don't have that kind of bitterness that they don't like.
Speaker 1: And they don't like because it's not because they don't like.
Speaker 1: They don't like because they don't expect it from the fact.
Speaker 1: While I have a nice story because my my grandpa
Speaker 1: he used to name from i'm inni montal one. He
Speaker 1: used to name the type of olive oils extraorgin oi
Speaker 1: oils like two ones. It's like we have white wine
Speaker 1: and red wine. He used to name it like white
Speaker 1: oil and black oil. The main two varieties in my
Speaker 1: area are ochilaka that means wide leaf and pequal. Piqual
Speaker 1: comes from the peak at the ends shape of the olive.
Speaker 1: And he used to name the biguel like black olive
Speaker 1: olive oil and the one from ahelanka the white olive wild.
Speaker 1: And it's because the piqua was deepest and more robust
Speaker 1: extorginally oil, and the ahrilanka is more has less bitterness
Speaker 1: and less stringency, let's say. And it's more aromatic, or
Speaker 1: usually it's more aromatic than pequal. Now with the state
Speaker 1: of the art technology that we have, we can get
Speaker 1: everything out of our knowlive to give plenty of a
Speaker 1: Roman flavor. So the pequal is like rubbust high intensity aroma.
Speaker 1: Tomato leaves is a little bit of green grass, olive
Speaker 1: olive leaves are romans and it's absolutely wonderful. I love it.
Speaker 1: I can't think about cooking without piqua at all. And
Speaker 1: there are alan see okay, I would like to show
Speaker 1: you a very good example to illustrate what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: You're going to see. The Olioteca is there is the
Speaker 1: name that we have given to this special place. Is
Speaker 1: something unique in the world. We have a justing in
Speaker 1: in front of the building, a very big collection. It's
Speaker 1: something unique and we have more than one hundred and
Speaker 1: fifty varieties comporting countries. Very is already black. But I'm
Speaker 1: standing in the world's only library for olive trees. The
Speaker 1: Oleo Teca, founded to preserve and study the bio diversity
Speaker 1: within the olive family. Honest Sanchez is an educator and
Speaker 1: coordinator at the Juana Amone Gillon Foundation, which focuses on
Speaker 1: breaking the rural sector and the olive farming in Spain
Speaker 1: closer to the public. Since late eighties, while the region's
Speaker 1: cultivation of olive trees intensified, leading to common mass production
Speaker 1: practices like mono cropping that have eliminated some of the
Speaker 1: diversity of the olives being farmed. The Foundation has been
Speaker 1: growing the varietals and its oleo teca. Many of these
Speaker 1: trees here are more than thirty years old, while some
Speaker 1: of the newer transplants are just two or three years
Speaker 1: old and incredibly already bearing fruit for study. It's like
Speaker 1: a garden, okay. They We produce olive oil with each
Speaker 1: variety every year from like some for example, we have
Speaker 1: brought varieties from Israel or maybe Go Mexico, Albania, Syria
Speaker 1: or Italy. So we study each variety. How is the niman,
Speaker 1: how is is the best way to produce each olive
Speaker 1: oil um, how it grows in our in our land,
Speaker 1: dying in our property, and how is the evolution To
Speaker 1: study in bio diversity seeks to understand not only the
Speaker 1: different traits and benefits unique to each type of olive,
Speaker 1: how local t is expressed, and how different olives vary
Speaker 1: when grown in different regions of the world. The Foundation
Speaker 1: partners with local universities and research groups understand traits such
Speaker 1: as physiochemical properties and their correlation to disease prevention, and
Speaker 1: physical properties of the plant like heartiness or resistance to disease.
Speaker 1: We'll come back to the importance this work later, but
Speaker 1: for now, let's wander through the growth on it to
Speaker 1: meet some of the unique varieties from the olives being
Speaker 1: cataloged and preserved here. Although all of these trees have
Speaker 1: similar structural characteristics, a beautiful variety of colors, shapes, textures,
Speaker 1: and sizes of fruit showcase the level of diversity possible
Speaker 1: even within a closely related group of species. There's so
Speaker 1: many characteristics that seem to be different. Some fruit or
Speaker 1: small and round couple of shapes, while others, like the
Speaker 1: Sartha espana, a variety a typical to Spain is wrinkled
Speaker 1: and almost unidentifiable as an olive our other varieties. For example,
Speaker 1: we have a god it's a typical variety from a
Speaker 1: Spain is a very big one. But you can think,
Speaker 1: or you may think that the quality is going to
Speaker 1: be better because it's bigger, that the fruit is bigger,
Speaker 1: or it's going to be to produce a out more
Speaker 1: quantity because it's bigger down for example are beginna. But
Speaker 1: it isn't necessary to be like this, because you can
Speaker 1: have a very high quality oil from the variety Abkina,
Speaker 1: and the goal isn't used to produce oils just for
Speaker 1: for it. The Godals Sivianna is a beloved Spanish cultivar
Speaker 1: and the biggest variety of olive by a large margin.
Speaker 1: It's got a huge pit that's proportionately as large as
Speaker 1: its pulpy flesh. Because it's low in oil content, this
Speaker 1: variety is commonly seen as the teple olive and not
Speaker 1: used for production. The Cora nick olive originating from the Peloponnese,
Speaker 1: looks actually opposite or at all. It yields super high
Speaker 1: intensity fruit that yields lots of oil. It's constant yields
Speaker 1: of fruity balanced oil have also made it one of
Speaker 1: the most popular olives ground an injuries. And you see
Speaker 1: for example a colneg it's a variety from grief that
Speaker 1: have a very good property and the flavor is a
Speaker 1: very interesting a variety to study and maybe to develop
Speaker 1: in the future, we don't know. And we have a
Speaker 1: very particular one that it for example, as a blancot
Speaker 1: is the wild olive Greek, but they are blanco. White
Speaker 1: is very particular because the old when the time of
Speaker 1: the harvest, thing arrives thanks to white instead to to black.
Speaker 1: So it's a very special one. The oil isn't so good,
Speaker 1: but it's a very particular old to show people that
Speaker 1: hams to to affend a good man to visit as
Speaker 1: to explain how important and how it divers and how
Speaker 1: big is the olive oil sector. That's the reason of
Speaker 1: our foundation to explain all the people, to educate people
Speaker 1: and to to show them going for a walk. It's
Speaker 1: the easier way to explain them how important is the
Speaker 1: olivel sector for Spain and for our culture. The foundation
Speaker 1: promotes olive oil culture. Okay, nowadays we are using many
Speaker 1: innovative techniques, maybe in the development of new businesses in
Speaker 1: in many companies or many sectors, but especially in the
Speaker 1: olive oil sector. We try to balance the use of
Speaker 1: the innovation with the tradition in Spain. Spain is the
Speaker 1: main producer of olive oil in the world, that's a fact.
Speaker 1: And the eighty percent of the olive oil that is
Speaker 1: produced by Spain is from Andalusia. It's a very important
Speaker 1: point because two hundred and fifty families of Andalusia depends
Speaker 1: on the olive oil sector. So we have to explain
Speaker 1: how important is the oil, the olive oil in our culture,
Speaker 1: in our society. Okay, how important is for our history,
Speaker 1: for our tradition. It's anna details. Olive oil is an
Speaker 1: ancient pillar to diets here. The average Spaniard consumes one
Speaker 1: leader per month, and this integral role in diet is
Speaker 1: true to cultures throughout the Mediterranean basin. Along with the
Speaker 1: growing global taste for olive oil and the pressure to
Speaker 1: produce more is unquestionable. Growths here in Andalusia today are
Speaker 1: dominated by piqual Oli blanca and Urbikina, and Pequal specifically
Speaker 1: has become the world's most prolific olive account for half
Speaker 1: of Spain's olive trees. These varietals hardiness, high oil content
Speaker 1: and high polyphenal content have made them favorites for intensive
Speaker 1: mass growing. The story sounds familiar because it is farming
Speaker 1: in the twenty one century around the world have brought
Speaker 1: to question many practices about how highly demanded crops are
Speaker 1: produced and what that means for farmers, farm workers, local
Speaker 1: agriculture and economies, and for the health of the land
Speaker 1: and environment in the face of not just a changing climate.
Speaker 1: In a changing environment, there's also international tree attentions to consider,
Speaker 1: which we want covered today. The end of the day,
Speaker 1: one of the most overwhelming forces that farmers are beholden
Speaker 1: to is simply the supply and demands of a commoditized market.
Speaker 1: And it's become especially problematic for our farmers in Spain
Speaker 1: since the price has fallen below the cost of production
Speaker 1: in the past couple of years. Because Kyle Davis, our
Speaker 1: first expert from Olio as stepa co Op at least
Speaker 1: sums it up. I definitely feel for a lot of
Speaker 1: the small farmers who you know, their their entire livelihood
Speaker 1: depends on the crop and and on prices being at
Speaker 1: reasonable levels. But the fact of the matter is is
Speaker 1: that there's been a lot of olive trees planted over,
Speaker 1: you know, throughout Spain over the last five ten years,
Speaker 1: and there was a really large amount of production um
Speaker 1: in terms of the two thousand and nineteen twenty harvest,
Speaker 1: and there was a lot of carryover as well after
Speaker 1: a record harvest in the two thousand and eighteen nineteen harvest,
Speaker 1: And so there's just a lot of olive oil in
Speaker 1: the market, and it just kind of comes down to
Speaker 1: supply and demand, and so you know, when there's a
Speaker 1: lot of oil, people dropped their prices and and and
Speaker 1: so on. Fortunately, we're in a situation where the current
Speaker 1: prices for all three categories Lampante, virgin and virgin extra
Speaker 1: are pretty much below cost of production, which is which
Speaker 1: is tough for the farmers for sure. While co op
Speaker 1: structures and pricing practices like that of Oleo Steppa may
Speaker 1: help protect farmers from some of the volatility we see
Speaker 1: in global supply and demand, perhaps these co op models
Speaker 1: can be a part of the solution for the future,
Speaker 1: but it's yet to be told whether these incentives we
Speaker 1: enough to help maintain the livelihood of farmers in the industry,
Speaker 1: Like sym rates farming community in India who have become
Speaker 1: interested in coconut farming as a new cash crop. Kyle
Speaker 1: describes that for small farmers that are hurting now, we
Speaker 1: see groves and parcels of land that were historically producing
Speaker 1: all of are being replanted for crops that are paying
Speaker 1: more now, like almonds. This feels like a complex conundrum
Speaker 1: because at the end of the day, it brings to
Speaker 1: question our entire global food system, and there's not an
Speaker 1: easy way to understand, let alone solve for the complexities
Speaker 1: that that may brain. So where do we go from here?
Speaker 1: My answer for consumers can be in making informed voting
Speaker 1: decisions based on what we purchase. At the end of
Speaker 1: the day, I think it's most important to start from
Speaker 1: an understanding of origin and where the things we eat
Speaker 1: and drink come from. Supporting small farmers and producers who
Speaker 1: are socially environmentally responsible is also a great starting point
Speaker 1: for olive oil. Our friends in Spain encourage us to
Speaker 1: understand and support biodiversity within olives. Supporting the farmers like
Speaker 1: our friends in Spain that are preserving this richness and
Speaker 1: plants and crops from around the world can help honor
Speaker 1: cultural origins, but can also hold a key to resilience
Speaker 1: in solving conundrums. In our edible Commodities features h h
Speaker 1: h h h h h h h h h h
Speaker 1: h h h h h h h h h. Thank
Speaker 1: you to our guests on this episode, farmer Symritt, Molly
Speaker 1: Kyle Davis of Oleo Steppa, oleologist Alfonso Fernandez, and an
Speaker 1: A Sanchez of the Wan ramon Gian Foundation. To learn more,
Speaker 1: check out our website www. Wet Stone magazine dot com,
Speaker 1: including for tips on how to taste and select olive
Speaker 1: oil and how to just generally better appreciate the global
Speaker 1: diversity of unique cultivars h m hm, h m hmm.