The price of the purchase basket has been living for months to make olive oil, although now there are other products, such as eggs, which are giving more headaches after weeks of ups. To compensate for the latter, the oil – at least in origin – has practically returned to its starting point, because what is paid to producers is the same as in autumn of 2022, when its inflationist spiral began.
The Ministry of Agriculture measures, weekly, the price of every 100 kilos of oil when leaving the oil mill, that is, before reaching the distribution, to supermarkets and food stores. There the last data corresponds to March 16, when it stood at 406.04 euros. If we refer to 2022, that price was not seen since October of that year, just at the moment in which the notices began that difficult times came regarding the cost of this essential raw material, as a consequence of a collapse of production due to the persistent drought. “This is one Exceptional campaign for low”, Said the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, Luis Planas.
The following graph shows the evolution of the price at the origin of extra virgin olive oil since the beginning of 2022, months before its promotion to historical maximums. The previous and after the invasion of Ukraine by Russia are included, which resulted in the widespread rise in inflation.
Now, those fatalistic messages are behind and the opposite situation is lived, because there is a general call to prevent those prices from being paid to the olive groves, especially when the rainy weeks that are living in the Iberian Peninsula make a positive evolution of the crops.
In fact, Luis Planas has made an appeal not to damage the compensation paid to the olive groves, so that they can cover their production costs. “The market rules,” assumed the head of Agriculture, but “I have sent a message, they have to be [precios] Remunerators for all the links of the chain. Let’s focus on this campaign, if everyone does what it should, it has to go well, ”in reference to the rain can increase production and shoot the offer over the coming months.” You have to have a long look, “he added.
At the moment, agriculture forecasts go to reach 1.42 million tons in this campaign, which leaves behind a few years in which the 800,000 tons have been touched. A situation that had impact on global prices, because Spain concentrates 40% of world production and 77% of all the oil that occurs in the European Union as a whole.
Since October, the price of olive oil in origin has fallen more than 45%. And if the fall is measured since it touched maximums – there is just over a year, in January 2024 – the fall has been more than 55%.
This evolution has led producers to put on the table that they have trouble covering their own costs, which have not dropped to the same extent. “We are in four euros in origin when we should start from five in the lowest categories,” he explained in an interview with Eldiario.es the general secretary of the Union of Small Farmers and Livestocks (UPA), Cristóbal Cano. “In some places, we are below production costs and that is not sustainable. Right now there are farms, with the prices we have, which are in red numbers,” he said.
Prices in supermarkets
Olive oil has dropped both in origin and points of sale, although it has not yet returned to the prices it had in the distribution before the entire escalation began. Then in the final stretch of 2022, it could be found in supermarkets around 3.2 euros, in the case of the extra virgin. Now, for example, a liter of this variety of the Mercadona landowner brand costs 5.85 euros, exactly the same as during the day; while Carrefour’s is 5.84 euros.
As a context, at the beginning of 2024, these same teachers fired the price of extra virgin olive oil at the final point of sale above 12 euros per liter. That is, in a year, the descent in the final link of the food chain is around 50%, always in the case of white marks.
In parallel, this price decrease has made consumers accelerate their purchase. Public agriculture, monthly, an analysis of the basket that households acquire, although it has been decalating months. The last data corresponds to November, when Spanish households acquired 52% more olive oil than in the same month of the previous year. Together, the purchase volume – domestic only, because it does not include hospitality – exceeded, in that penultimate month of 2024, the 26.2 million liters, according to the aforementioned consumption panel. A year earlier, he stayed at almost 18.2 million. They also meant a much higher outlay, because Aove purchases made in the last November were equivalent to 190 million euros, almost 40% more than a year earlier.
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