Olive glut puts skids under oil producers at risk

A second bumper harvest could see Spanish farmers driven from the land they have worked for generations, says a report in UK’s The Independent. Already faced with a glut of olives equivalent to 95 million litres of olive oil, this exceptionally dry winter means the Andalucian industry is braced for its second bumper crop in a row, which could see 285 million litres flood an already saturated market. Factor in a 70% increase in production costs, the stagnation of farm prices in the past 15 years and a Spanish economy on the rocks, and the result is clear: after years of overproduction, large sectors of the olive oil industry are going to the wall.