The 2025/26 Harvest: Back to Plenty?
As the 2025/26 harvest approached, the mood had flipped entirely from the panic of two years before. Now the worry wasn’t scarcity — it was a glut, and what cheap oil does to the people who grow it.
What happened
With rain restored, Spain forecast a major rebound — output up around 48% to roughly 1.26 million tonnes — and the wider Mediterranean looked healthier too. After years of shortage, the world was heading back to plenty, and prices reflected it.
Why it matters — and the twist
For consumers, the crisis was ending. But the swing was so violent that growers who’d just weathered drought now faced prices below their cost of production. The olive world had careened from famine to feast in two seasons — whiplash, not balance — and it’s the small traditional grower, as ever, caught in the middle.
Stand back from 2014–2025 and the moral is simple: wild price swings are bad for everyone except the speculators and the fraudsters. Too dear, and shoppers get fleeced and fakes flood in; too cheap, and the groves that make real oil go broke and disappear. The thing worth wanting — and worth paying for — is honest oil at a fair, steady price. That’s the whole argument of this site, written across a decade of news.
Source, 2025: 2025/26 harvest forecasts via the International Olive Council and Olive Oil Times.