In an olive grove on the outskirts of Athens, grower Konstantinos Markou pushed aside the shoots of new growth to reveal the stump of a tree.

The roughly 150-year-old specimen, he said, was among 15 cut down on his neighbour’s land by thieves eager to turn it into money.

Surging olive oil prices,  driven in part by two years of drought in Spain, has meant opportunity for criminals across the Mediterranean.

Warehouse break-ins, dilution of premium oil with inferior product, and falsification of shipping data are on the rise in olive-growing heartlands of Greece, Spain and Italy.

And perhaps worst of all — gangs using chainsaws to steal heavily laden branches and even entire trees from unguarded groves.

The crimes have meant fewer olives for growers already contending with high production costs and climate change that has brought warmer winters, major flooding and more intense forest fires.

In Italy’s southern Puglia region, growers have pleaded with police to form an agriculture division.

Greek farmers want to bring back a rural police division that was phased out in 2010. In Spain, a company has developed tracking devices that look like olives to try and catch thieves.

Thefts cause ‘serious harm’ to trees

The olive groves outside Athens are part of a tradition that stretches back to antiquity, on plains that now surround the city’s international airport. Some trees are centuries old.

Most of the thefts are branches.

When an entire tree is cut down, the thieves typically cut it up and load the pieces into a ute, selling the wood to lumber yards or firewood vendors and taking the olives to an oil mill.

“The (robbers) look for heavily loaded branches and they cut them,” said Neilos Papachristou, who runs an olive mill and nearby grove in a fourth-generation family business.

“So, not only do they steal our olives, but they cause the tree serious harm. It takes four to five years for it to return to normal.”

The thefts are driving some growers to harvest early, which means accepting lower yields to avoid long-term damage to their trees.

That includes Christos Bekas, who was among the farmers at Papachristou’s mill who were dumping their crop into stainless steel loading bins, untying sacks and tipping over tall wicker baskets from the back of their trucks.

Mr Bekas, who owns 5,000 olive trees, suffered repeated raids by thieves before deciding to take an early harvest.

The decision required more than two and a half times as many olives by weight to produce a kilogram of oil as last year, he said.

“And all this after we’ve been spending nights guarding our fields,” he said. “The situation is appalling.”

‘Farmers must be protected’

After decades of growth, the global olive oil market has been disrupted by a nearly two-year drought in Spain, which typically accounts for about 40 per cent of world supply.

It’s expected to shrink global production to 2.5 million metric tons this crop year, down from 3.4 million a year earlier.

Benchmark prices in Spain, Greece and Italy for extra virgin oil reached 9 euros ($14.92 per pound) in September, more than tripling from their level in 2019.