The price paid to farmers for a liter of olive oil has fallen to €3.28!

€3.28 per litre to prune the olive trees, collect the branches and shred them, cut the grass between the olive trees (us with our sheep, our neighbours with a tractor), harvest the olives and transport them to the cooperative… An outrage!

In addition to this, there are the services that society should be entitled to expect from farmers:

1️⃣ Provide healthy, nutrient-rich foods

2️⃣ Protect water quality

3️⃣ Protect biodiversity

4️⃣ Feeding the animals in the pasture

5️⃣ Storing CO2 in the soil for climate

6️⃣ …and prevent fires

Fortunately, we have our own mill. And a year ago, we made the decision to sell directly to individuals – which already represents 40% of our income. Our neighbors, on the other hand, are among the 99% of olive producers who sell exclusively to the cooperative, at €3.28/liter.

So, of course, they reduce their costs to a minimum:

- The olives will spend a week oxidizing and fermenting in a container to reduce transport costs to the cooperative. So forget about nutrients and taste

- the wood from the pruning is burned

- Sheep grazing? Too much work. We plow with a tractor

- monoculture, erosion, …

And yet,...

Those looking for cheap oil shouldn't get their hopes up, because the same oil will be on supermarket shelves, but at €18, €20, or more. So the bottler and the store share 82% of the retail price. The farmer gets 18%.

While we buy "fair-trade" products from developing countries, we are unknowingly paying a scandalously low price to our own European farmers.

But "cheap" food doesn't exist. The real cost lies elsewhere.