The Olive Oil Price Crash of 2025
Everything that goes up… In 2025, after the painful highs of 2023 and 2024, olive oil prices crashed back down. Good news for shoppers — and a fresh crisis for the people who grow it.
What happened
Rain returned to Spain, and with it the harvest: Spanish output rebounded dramatically — forecast up around 48% to roughly 1.26 million tonnes — and the whole market followed. Prices for every grade fell back toward 2022 levels, with Spanish farm-gate prices down more than 50% year on year. The two-year shortage was over.
The twist no one expected
Here is the cruel irony. The same growers who survived the drought now faced the opposite problem: prices fell so far, so fast, that many couldn’t cover their production costs. After years of consumers wincing at the till, it was suddenly the farmers in trouble. The olive world swung from too-little to too-much almost overnight — whiplash, not balance.
2025 is the clearest possible illustration of the true cost of an olive. When prices spike, shoppers pay and fraudsters feast; when they crash, the farmers who keep the ancient groves alive go broke and walk away — which sows the next shortage. A fair, stable price that lets honest growers make a living and lets you afford real oil is the thing everyone actually needs, and the thing the market keeps overshooting. Pay a fair price for honest oil; it’s how the groves — and the good stuff — survive.
Source, 2025: Olive Oil Times, “Falling Olive Oil Prices Spark Concern in Spain”.