need for irrigation The Olive Oil Crisis Spreads as Prices Soar. What’s to Blame.
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Crude has fallen some 10% this year, but another, less crude variety of oil is rocketing higher. Prices of extra virgin olive oil are at a record high, according to statistics tracked by the International Monetary Fund going back to 1990. In April, olive oil was trading for $6,269.63 per metric ton, up 46% from last year’s level.
For those who buy their cooking and dipping oils in quantities of less than a ton, that comes out to about $6 a liter (33.8 fluid ounces) at wholesale, or roughly twice that or more, depending on brand and quality, at retail. Filippo Berio, a top U.S. olive oil brand based in New Jersey, calls the latest olive season “the most challenging on record, with the lowest crop yields in 30 years.”
Olive oil has gotten much pricier because of a severe drought since last year in Spain, where some 40% of it is produced. Last summer was Spain’s hottest on record, and among the driest. Spain’s Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food projected in March that the crop will yield just 680,000 tons of olive oil in the current growing season, down from the five-year average of 1.37 million tons, according to Olive Oil Times. Spain has asked the European Union for emergency funds to help farmers. The Italian harvest also came in light.
Extreme temperatures and prices could be a sign of more volatility ahead—and more sticker shock for shoppers stocking up on the oil. Climate change is likely to make it harder to grow olives in some of the best regions for production, Spanish and Portuguese researchers found in one study. It’s a problem that “canola” be solved with some larger changes.