Producers Navigate Climate and Market Headwinds with Optimism

As 2024 comes to a close, Olive Oil Times Harvest Survey results show mea­sured lev­els of opti­mism among pro­duc­ers.

In the annual sur­vey sent to 4,208 pro­duc­ers in 30 coun­tries, farm­ers and millers rated the 2024/25 crop year as above-aver­age over­all. However, the impacts of cli­mate change, volatile mar­ket prices, con­sumer con­fu­sion and labor chal­lenges remained crit­i­cal con­cerns.

Still, pro­duc­ers rated the cur­rent har­vest 67 out of 100, a sub­stan­tial improve­ment from last year’s rat­ing of 51 and sig­nif­i­cantly above the aver­age of the pre­vi­ous six years.

To empha­size this point, nearly 62 per­cent of respon­dents said this year’s har­vest was bet­ter than last year’s, with farm­ers and millers rat­ing quan­tity as 62, the high­est rat­ing since 2019, and qual­ity as 82, the high­est since 2021.

The 2024 OOT Harvest Score

“After two dif­fi­cult years, we are incred­i­bly thank­ful for a suc­cess­ful har­vest,” said Lucia Gamez of Tropicual in Jaén, Spain. ​“This sea­son brought chal­lenges – untimely rain threat­ened and dis­rupted our plans.”

“Yet, we were for­tu­nate,” she added. ​“Monitoring con­di­tions daily, the weather granted us a small win­dow to har­vest, ensur­ing our early har­vest at the olive’s matu­rity point we sought.

The 2024 Quality Score

Other pro­duc­ers said this year’s har­vest was their best yet and are opti­mistic about the prospects for the next one.

“We were very pleased with the 2024 crop here in Georgia, United States,” said Ciriaco Chavez of Fresh Press Farms. ​“We began har­vest in early September and fin­ished in early October. This year’s crop was the best we have ever had and likely rep­re­sents the largest crop ever in Georgia, and the trees are set up well for a good 2025 crop.”

Better than last year

Data from the United States Department of Agriculture (the International Olive Council has not pub­lished its offi­cial har­vest fore­cast yet) indi­cate that global olive oil pro­duc­tion is antic­i­pated to rise to 3.1 mil­lion met­ric tons in 2024/25.

Despite achiev­ing the high­est yields since 2021/22, pro­duc­ers remain wary of the usual con­cerns com­pounded by the wide-rang­ing impacts of global con­flicts and chang­ing geopo­lit­i­cal real­i­ties.

Climate con­cerns remain top of mind

Once again, cli­mate change tops the list of chal­lenges pro­duc­ers face, with 58 per­cent call­ing it one of their most sig­nif­i­cant con­cerns.

One of the hall­marks of cli­mate change has been the increase of extreme weather.

Across the Mediterranean basin, pro­duc­ers said the sud­den shift from a hot and dry sum­mer to a wet and tem­per­ate autumn impeded olive col­lec­tion and, in some cases, resulted in lower oil accu­mu­la­tion in the olives.

Producers’ top concerns

“We are expe­ri­enc­ing an excep­tional har­vest in regards to our qual­ity and vol­ume of fruit, but we are notic­ing a dra­matic drop in our yields com­pared to pre­vi­ous years,” said Diamantis Pierrakos of Greek pro­ducer Laconiko.

“The heavy drought has taken a toll on the oil devel­op­ment in our fruit,” he added. ​“Although we have recently received much needed rain, it should have come much sooner.”

Overall, 53 per­cent of respon­dents said their har­vests were affected by exces­sive heat, while 43 per­cent said the same of drought.

“We had plenty of olives, but they were very small in size due to drought, low­er­ing yields and some­what affect­ing the qual­ity,” said Mehmet Taki of Bata Tartim Farm in Turkey.

The 2024 Yield Score

In gen­eral, 35 per­cent of farm­ers and millers said poor weather impacted their abil­ity to pro­duce olive oil, while 27 per­cent cited exces­sive rain as an issue.

“The 2024 har­vest was seri­ously affected by exces­sive spring rains in 2023,” said Fernando Rotondo of Brazil-based Olivopampa. ​“The new fruit set (2024/25) is also affected by spring rains and a cloud of Amazon [wild­fire] ashes in the envi­ron­ment that impeded pol­li­na­tion.”

Labor short­ages con­tinue to impact the har­vest

While pro­duc­ers said exces­sive heat, drought, poor weather and exces­sive rain were the four fac­tors most impact­ing their har­vests this year, labor short­ages were not far behind.

One-quar­ter of sur­vey respon­dents said the lack of work­ers dur­ing the har­vest directly impacted their oper­a­tions, while 35 per­cent cited labor dif­fi­cul­ties among their pri­mary con­cerns.

“As my trees mature, I am get­ting larger and larger har­vests, but I am very con­cerned about labor short­ages in California,” said Beth McCown of Central Coast Olive Oil Company.

“We need an immi­grant labor pro­gram that allows work­ers from other coun­tries to enter the state and return home after com­plet­ing the agri­cul­tural cycle,” she added.

Top challenges

Other pro­duc­ers iden­ti­fied labor short­ages as a two-pronged prob­lem. In addi­tion to strug­gling to find enough peo­ple to pick the olives and trans­port them to the mill quickly, sup­ply and demand dynam­ics meant pro­duc­ers had to pay higher wages, rais­ing pro­duc­tion costs.

“I am at a loss to find enough buy­ers this year to cover my esca­lat­ing pro­duc­tion costs,” said Lauren Clancy of Villa le Masse di San Leolino in Italy. ​“When we started pro­duc­ing oil in 2016, we paid €12 per hour for the har­vest. Now we pay €20 per hour, yet the whole­sale prices have not changed.”

Market prices con­tinue to con­cern pro­duc­ers

After hit­ting record highs in January 2024, olive oil prices at ori­gin are expected to fall below €5 per liter at the start of 2025.

This volatil­ity and its impact on con­sumers have resulted in mar­ket prices being among the most sig­nif­i­cant con­cerns for 39 per­cent of pro­duc­ers, sec­ond only to cli­mate change.

Falling prices at ori­gin have led some pro­duc­ers to worry that they may be unable to cover their increas­ing costs.

“Our main con­cern is the mar­ket and pric­ing,” said Taki of Bata Tarim Farm. ​“Prices are falling like a stone dis­card­ing the increase in costs. We hope the con­sump­tion growth will come back with lower prices.”

Other pro­duc­ers worry that two years of unprece­dent­edly high olive oil prices have changed con­sumers’ atti­tudes entirely.

“In a time of eco­nomic dif­fi­culty, the high price of olive oil makes it a com­mod­ity in the dis­cre­tionary spend cat­e­gory,” said Andrew Lilly of Juno Olives in New Zealand.

“With a poor har­vest and ever-increas­ing costs of fer­til­izer, fuel, freight, etc., the cost of olive oil may price us out of the mar­ket,” he added. ​“As an indus­try, we have low returns, and as a result, olive trees are being pulled out in favor of other crops.”

Anticipated ease of selling this year’s output

Despite con­cerns about prices, pro­duc­ers were highly con­fi­dent that sell­ing this year’s pro­duc­tion would be straight­for­ward, rat­ing it 72 (with zero being very dif­fi­cult to sell and 100 being very easy).

Lack of con­sumer knowl­edge hurt­ing pro­duc­ers

After cli­mate change and mar­ket prices, 38 per­cent of pro­duc­ers listed con­sumer con­fu­sion as one of their most sig­nif­i­cant chal­lenges.

From con­fus­ing ter­mi­nol­ogy and lack of aware­ness about olive oil health ben­e­fits and organolep­tic qual­i­ties to ram­pant dis­in­for­ma­tion, farm­ers and millers worry that olive oil edu­ca­tion is still not break­ing through at a large scale.

“Consumer edu­ca­tion is crit­i­cal to the suc­cess of the over­all indus­try,” said Paul Durant of Oregon-based Durant Olive Mill. ​“Not only on the obvi­ous, such as how to use olive oil, health ben­e­fits and how it enhances a culi­nary expe­ri­ence, but also how it is crafted, where the olives are sourced from, what the chain of cus­tody looks like for milling oper­a­tions.”

Many small-scale and tra­di­tional pro­duc­ers said they believe con­sumer igno­rance about organic and high-qual­ity extra vir­gin olive oil pro­duc­tion is directly related to unwill­ing­ness to pay higher prices.

“There is great effort and suc­cess in pro­duc­ing high-qual­ity olive oil, but the aver­age con­sumer con­sid­ers olive oil a com­mod­ity and is unwill­ing to pay the actual value of hand-picked, cold-pressed, small-pro­ducer prod­ucts,” said Zeynep Belger of Turkey-based Zayto.

Other pro­duc­ers empha­sized the com­mon refrain that olive oil must fol­low in the foot­steps of wine to main­tain prof­itabil­ity and con­tinue flour­ish­ing.

“Olive oil, espe­cially when it is extra vir­gin or organic, is not well-known world­wide,” said Eduardo from Il Casellino in Italy. ​“Campaigns should be done to explain how impor­tant olive oil is for our health and how engag­ing and expen­sive it is to pro­duce olive oil for the farmer, espe­cially if it is organic.”

“The price must reflect all this. People are ready to spend €100 for a bot­tle of wine, which may last only one day and not €20 for a bot­tle of oil, which does a lot for our health,” he added.

Tariffs and con­flict emerge as new wor­ries in 2024

While cli­mate, prices and con­sumer knowl­edge are peren­nial con­cerns for pro­duc­ers, the increas­ing geopo­lit­i­cal uncer­tainty of 2024 has brought new chal­lenges for farm­ers and millers.

Eleven per­cent of respon­dents cited tar­iffs as among their most sig­nif­i­cant con­cerns, height­ened by the elec­tion of for­mer President Donald J. Trump in the U.S., whose pre­vi­ous admin­is­tra­tion imple­mented two sets of tar­iffs tar­get­ing Spanish table olives and olive oil.

A fur­ther seven per­cent said tur­moil and con­flicts, which impact con­sumer sen­ti­ment and sup­ply chains (not to men­tion the peo­ple liv­ing through them), were among their chief wor­ries.

“The biggest threats to our work are the labor short­age and the pos­si­bil­ity of an esca­la­tion of the Russia-Ukraine war that will dis­rupt the entire global mar­ket and logis­tic chains,” said Julio Alves of Quinta dos Olmais.

“Smuggling from con­flict zones has tainted the rep­u­ta­tion” of olive oil, added Belger, about the smug­gling of olive oil from north­west­ern Syria through Turkey and into Europe to be blended and resold.

Producers remain con­fi­dent about the future

While pro­duc­ers face a range of chal­lenges that require bespoke and dif­fi­cult solu­tions, they gen­er­ally remain opti­mistic about the future.

On a scale of zero (no con­fi­dence) to 100 (very con­fi­dent), pro­duc­ers rated their con­fi­dence as 72.

The 2024 Producer Confidence Score

“The indus­try is grow­ing in California, and we are part of the surge with high-qual­ity extra vir­gin olive oil,” said Richard Meisler of San Miguel Olive Farm. ​“Our farm tours have dou­bled. We are look­ing for­ward to next year’s har­vest for good weather and quan­tity.”

Other pro­duc­ers said they feel hope­ful as they notice young and ener­getic new peo­ple enter­ing the sec­tor.

“Separately, we noted the entre­pre­neur­ial drive by two young broth­ers in our local town who opened a new small pro­duc­tion facil­ity with state-of-the-art machin­ery, seek­ing to break from tra­di­tion and pro­duce more high-qual­ity extra vir­gin olive oil,” said Gamez of Tropicual. ​“The indus­try is, there­fore, defin­i­tively grow­ing and attract­ing young tal­ent.