The rain in Spain has fallen rarely in the plain and for cooks today that’s a culinary pain

Prices of the cooking oil are already at record levels, thanks to a drought last year in major producers like Spain and Italy, leading to a 60% increase since last June, according to the Financial Times. The lack of rainfall has continued in 2023, which bodes poorly for this year’s harvest. Last month was Spain’s second-driest March this century, and this month is set to be the country’s driest April ever. “If it does not rain very soon, we are going to have a poor crop again,” Kyle Holland, a vegetable oils analyst at commodity tracker Mintec, told the Financial Times. Spanish exporters expect a 10% drop in global olive oil supplies this year, compared to production in 2021, according to Reuters. The increasing price of olive oil has had a knock-on effect on other goods that use it in their recipes. The price of a homemade pizza is up 22.5% year-on-year, driven by increases in the price of olive oil and other pizza ingredients, according to Bloomberg and its “Pizza Margherita ...