Year’s End 2025: Cheap Oil and Hard Questions
As 2025 closed, the cupboards were full and prices low — but cheap imports and below-cost farming had the industry asking what a fair market even looks like.
What happened
Year-end figures confirmed the recovery: a big 2024/25 crop, exports running at multi-year highs, and prices far below the 2024 peak. But the cheap oil came with unease — concern over low-priced Tunisian imports undercutting EU growers, and renewed calls for tighter controls and fairer farm-gate returns.
It’s a fitting end to the decade-long story this archive has tracked. From the 2014 collapse to the 2024 peak to this glut, the lesson holds: wild swings serve no one for long. 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, Dec 2025: International Olive Council, year-end statistics.