Year’s End 2025: Cheap Oil and Hard Questions
As 2025 ended, the shelves were full and prices had fallen hard. It should have been a relief — yet the cheap oil arrived with a bad conscience, because those same low prices were quietly ruining the growers who made it.
Every commodity has two prices that ought to be the same and rarely are: the price a shopper pays, and the price a grower is paid. For most of a wild decade those two numbers came unstuck in one direction — dear oil, angry shoppers. As 2025 closed they came unstuck in the other: cheap oil, and growers selling below what it costs to farm. A big 2024/25 harvest had refilled the cellars, exports were running strong, and extra virgin was far below its 2024 record. On paper, the crisis was over. In the groves, a different crisis had just begun.
Why cheap oil is not the same as a healthy market
A glut fixes the shopper’s problem and creates the farmer’s. When there is more oil than buyers want, the price at origin can fall below the cost of growing, picking and milling it — especially in the traditional groves where old, wide-spaced trees are hand-harvested and can never match the per-litre economics of a hedgerow super-intensive planting. Below-cost years do not clear quickly. Growers who cannot cover costs skip pruning, skimp on the harvest, or walk away from a grove entirely, and a tree abandoned is not a switch you flip back on next season. That is the quiet damage a ‘good news’ price story hides.
The Tunisian question
The flashpoint at year-end was cheap North African oil. Tunisia had a large crop and needed to move it, and a good deal of very good Tunisian oil was reportedly sold to European buyers well under its own official minimum export price — some of it near €2.7–2.8 a kilo against a stated floor of €3.40. To a Spanish or Italian grower already selling below cost, that looks like the floor being kicked out from under an entire market. To a Tunisian grower it looks like the only way to sell a record harvest. Both are right, which is exactly why it is such a hard problem: there is no villain, just a surplus and a scramble for the exit.
What a fair price would actually do
The honest answer nobody in a price war wants to hear is that both extremes are bad. A 2024-style spike prices real oil out of ordinary kitchens and hands the gap to fraudsters. A 2025-style trough starves the growers who keep the trees alive. The thing worth wanting is dull: a fair, steady, farm-covering price that lets an honest producer stay in business and puts real extra virgin on the shelf at a price a family can pay. That is not romantic and it does not make headlines. It is simply the only version of this market that lasts. See the true cost of an olive.
| The relief | Big 2024/25 crop, full cellars, prices far below the 2024 peak |
|---|---|
| The catch | At the farm gate, many growers selling below the cost of production |
| The flashpoint | Cheap Tunisian oil sold into Europe below its own official minimum |
| Who wins | Shoppers, blenders, bottlers buying cheap |
| Who loses | Traditional hand-harvested growers with no cost cushion |
| The real fix | A fair, stable price — not a spike, not a crash |
What a buyer should take from it
- Cheap is not automatically good. A rock-bottom ‘extra virgin’ in a glut year is still worth a second look — bargains are also where fraud hides.
- Traceable origin still matters even when oil is cheap: it tells you a real grower was paid.
- Buy the honest middle. A fair price that keeps a farmer in business is the one that keeps real oil on the shelf next year.
- Watch the farm-gate story, not just the supermarket one. Cheap on the shelf can mean crisis in the grove.
Cheap oil and hard questions: common questions
Why were olive-oil prices low at the end of 2025?
A large 2024/25 harvest had refilled global stocks after years of shortage, and extra virgin had fallen far below its 2024 record — a classic swing from scarcity to glut.
If oil was cheap, why was the industry unhappy?
Because the same low prices left many growers selling below the cost of production. Cheap oil is good for shoppers and hard on the farmers who grow it, especially traditional hand-harvested groves.
What was the issue with Tunisian imports?
Tunisia had a large crop and some of its oil was reportedly sold into Europe well below its own official minimum export price, which put further downward pressure on already below-cost EU growers.
Is a glut better or worse than a shortage?
Both extremes cause harm. A spike prices real oil out of kitchens and invites fraud; a crash starves growers. A fair, steady price is the only healthy state.
What should I do as a buyer?
Don’t chase the absolute cheapest bottle. Look for traceable origin and a real harvest date, and be willing to pay a fair price that keeps honest growers in business.
Here is the thing a decade of watching this market teaches you: the wild swings serve no one for long. Everyone cheers cheap oil until they notice the grower who made it is going under, and everyone curses dear oil until they remember it was a real shortage, not greed. The only version of this trade that survives is the boring one — an honest oil at a fair, steady price that a farmer can live on and a family can afford. That is the whole argument of this site, and 2025 made it from the other direction.
Drawn from International Olive Council year-end statistics (December 2025) and trade reporting on the 2025 price trough and Tunisian export pricing.