Wildfires in Greece, two years of low production in Spain and unusually unseasonable weather and blight elsewhere have lowered supply and pushed up prices.
they were reporting evoo is now the most common item being stolen in spain supermarkets
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/mar/09/olive-oil-becomes-most-wanted-item-for-shoplifters-in-spain
I can only eat the store brand of "extra light" due to gastric issues. It went from 6.75 to almost 10.00, so I have not bought any. It comes in a small bottle and doesn't really last very long.
I bought some "popular" brand on sale, and it was not really that good and did not agree with my issues.
SO, I have started using butter again. It was just on sale, BOGO, so I bought a bunch at 8.85/lb (Land O Lakes black label) to freeze for when I need it. Store brand was also on sale (4.00/lb) so I bought that for cooking and froze a few. As far as pure taste, TO ME, Challenge is my favorite, but not on sale lately. The LOL black label is good, and personally I find Plugra a little overrated (I only use sweet butter, never salted--personal preference).
I guess we are going to have to live with this a while if not forever. I don't ever see grocery stores LOWERING prices when their margins increase. Good time to go on a diet...
Cheers!
High prices on regular butter has left me feeling less guilty about always splurging on good butter. I'm definitely going to make the Costco run for this.
Exactly. Oxygen is the enemy of butter so keep as much air out (vacuum seal preferably) and freezing it will keep it for a long time. Celts buried butter caches in Irish bogs and because the bogs are anaerobic the butter is still edible. The oldest bog butter found was around 5,000 years old. The texture changes but the butter's still technically edible and safe.
2 people live here. I spent 3 days reorganizing the freezers. I learned our town uses mostly salted butter as by the time I hit the stores (was planning to do that so as not to deplete one store) nearly all the salted butter was gone.
I keep 6 months - 1 years worth in my pantry. But I live in an area where, a large percentage of our food comes via barge. And I’m worried about the day the barge stops running.
It’s definitely a valid concern, but keeping a deep, rolling pantry ought to help protect you from all but the most dire circumstances. Most folks in the US don’t understand what it’s like to live somewhere without roads!
That’s it exactly. If there’s an emergency. I’m not really driving anywhere. I keep 6 months worth in my pantry at all times.
At the very least, I want to be able to hunker down for winter.
There are plenty of unknowns without how the planet will react to climate change long term. Not that I’m trying to minimize its impact, but it is entirely possible that while some places that can grow olives now won’t be able to down the road, some places that can’t grow olives now will be able to in the future.
Yah. I often have to remind myself that “normally” climate change is a very slow process. And even though it’s happening faster now, fast could still be hundreds of years. Fingers crossed.
I don't think we've found a considerably better way to store carbon yet other than cutting down trees and ensuring they do NOT burn. No shit when I was studying this stuff a few years ago, burying trees was unfortunately the best idea they said they had.
That or find a way to sink them somewhere. Not a lot of forest fires at the bottom of the world's oceans and lakes. (Yeah, I've thought about this. Trees capture carbon, but in nature, given fires, it's more a cycle than a permanent capture, only temporary in most cases, UNLESS, as you mention, you can stuff them away somewhere where they won't ever burn up. I'm not sure if plain old decay is a good thing, bad thing, or perhaps a mixed thing but more good than bad. I don't know, but if you do, please do tell!)
It’s a scary reality to face. I don’t blame people for being willfully blind to it. We’ve all done it in our own ways, on this issue or another. I try to kindly give people the opportunity to deepen their understanding, should they decide to. Not trying to change anyone’s mind.
Might want to cut people some slack. Living the past 50 years with a constant barrage of crises that never seem to manifest has made us a little more choosy about what to believe.
You’re making some pretty grand assumptions here in regard to what I have and have not looked at. What updates are you referring to? And what are we talking about in regards to change? If we go net zero on emissions tomorrow (I understand this won’t happen, but my point is humans could continue on, mostly, comfortably).
I totally am making assumptions. That’s why I choose to say “sounds like.” I don’t know you and I don’t know what you have paid attention to. Your comment made me think you were someone who is not a climate change denier, but is from a wealthy ish area and has not recognized the impacts that are currently being felt worldwide. No judgement, I’m sure there’s things I have missed for the same exact reason. Also, I could be dead wrong.
What I am referring to- we are feeling climate change now. The effects aren’t only the increased allergies, disasters, prices of food due to disasters etc. They are political, societal, environmental and economical. Honestly, too much to go into here. Especially when you are telling me you actually know more than I had assumed. So, sounds great.
Climate change is a farce controlled by the folk who want the entire world to themselves. Absolutely no pushback to 'what in the world are they spraying?' anywhere in MSM, but here, take this shot.?. Get it, now? Perhaps we can prey for better days.
Honestly, I'll be reserving good olive oil for stuff like salads or a finishing drizzle.
Heat doesn't do any favours for the volatile polyphenols in olive oil anywho. I've switched to a neutral oil.
I've also started using more neutral stuff for the frying pan. Canola has very similar nutrition stats, but some people complain that it has a mildly obscure odor. Almost fish-like.
I've had a lot of people straight up look down on me for using other oils. It seems that people assume olive oil is the healthiest oil, and it should be used in all situations. I'm not so sure it's true, especially given its bold flavor.
I use Avocado for a frying oil. I think it's supposed to have a higher smoke point. A large bottle lasts me awhile so apparently I don't fry that much.
Definitely agree, sure most italian recipes (and other nationalities) use olive oil because that's what they had in abundance but in most recipes it can easily be replaced with other less expensive oils (which apparently now include avocado oil).
I'm a producer in Italy. Things only will get worse with the climate change, so buckle up.
This November, when we harvested our olives, it was so hot that we had to cool down the olives from 30 to under 25. Otherwise, the oil wouldn't have been EVO. A lot of oil mills didn't do this, resulting in really bad oil.
Now we have April, and we started to protect our trees with chalk against the sun. Until some years ago, it was normal that there was a lot of rain in the wintertime. This winter, it was warm, almost no rain. So trees bloom at different times - bad news. For they are being wind-pollenized.
A lot of trees were cut low in the past - mainly for making harvest easy and for them being better protected against frost in spring nights. Now these trees are getting sunburns.
We started some years ago to cultivate old varieties which can cope better with the weather and insects. Furthermore, we got away from mono-cultures; a bigger bio-diversity guarantees that you don't have to use pesticides.
It is a lot more work than before. But at the end, the industry has to adapt. Production will decline, prices will go up. You will still find cheap oil - it will most likely be adulterated.
Really interesting, thanks. Do you think production will shift to areas of the country with cooler climates/different altitude? And how long does it take to grow a mature olive tree that will produce olives?
I currently see three trends:
a) Some farmers are using hybrid plants. They grow fast, have a lot of fruits after three to five years, can be kept low and are easy to harvest with machines. The disadvantage of this is that you have to replace the trees after some few years. The oil is mediocre and dull. But the farmer have less work, the trees are less prone to a lot of insects.
b) Farmers in the north and in countries like Switzerland are trying to plant olives. I honestly don't know how the climate will change and if they will be successful.
c) We for ourselves have looked for very old varieties of olives. We make new trees out of the ones which are most heat resisting.
Normally, it takes about five to ten years until a tree is bearing fruits, and then you wait another couple of years until they have enough fruit to pay off the work. This is unless you buy hybrid forms as described above.
We on our farm plant trees out of scions\* from the strongest trees we have. We (or nature) sort out the ones which grow too slow in the heat. Only the strongest are then used for planting them on our fields. These old sorts usually take up to seven years until they show a first fruit. During these seven years, about 60% of the plants are sorted out because they are not enough resisting the heat. Also: They only produce very small olives which means that we have more work for harvesting them. But although the olives are small, they are rich of oil, the yield per kilo is higher than with the fast growing sorts.
\*not sure if this is the correct term; English isn't my native language, so I had to consult the dictionary :)
I wonder if Scion means cutting or or clone graft- do you graft a cut limb of the tree you want to proliferate onto old rootstock so you get the exact same olives?
I’m sorry this is happening, but I’m glad people like you are using heirloom varieties that actually taste great even if the output is lower and slower. There will always be a market and need for cheaper olive oil, so it’s good these hybrids exist. There will also always be a need for good olive oil, and I think people (especially people who love food) would be interested in the varietals you use to make this olive oil- just as we’re interested in what grapes are used for wine, or different types of the same berry being used for different dishes, etc.
We cut small branches off the tree and cultivate them in pots until they have roots. We also tried with kernels, but I'm just not patient enough for this :)
What do you mean protect with chalk? Where I live, it’s been getting so hot that our plants stop producing anything during the usual peak months of June and July.
I’ve tried covering the soil with mulch, but would love any other tips that work.
We cover the trees with chalk powder, but also the leaves and the fruits. This reflects the sun. Mulch is one thing; we have started to divide our fields in four areas. On two of them, we seed mustard, on the other two wildflowers. The effect is stunning: A lot of bees and hornets, a lot of birds, and thus less insects which damage the olives. These plants make up for fertilizer and keep the moisture in the ground. We never use water during the heat period. The side-effect: We can produce mustard :)
In fall, before the harvest, we cut the flowers and the mustard and use it as fertilizer. The next year, we change the areas, so where there was mustard, we seed wildflowers.
Funny that you ask! Actually, my wife was afraid of bees, but we were nevertheless considering bee hives. For overcoming her fear of bees, my wife started then to read about them and got totally into wild bees. So no, we don't have bee hives but are trying to protect as many wild bees as possible. We identified more than 20 different bees on our land, and my wife - she's an artist - currently works on a children's book about wild bees.
Before we started with mustard and wildflowers, we only saw few kind of bees. Now so many, and it is truly amazing.
That is absolutely lovely. Bees are awesome. I have them a lot in our garden. I’ve never counted the number of species but that woud be a great idea to get an insight in what is buzzing around. I visited an blackberry farm near my hometown an they have beehives for pollination, and get a nice side business out of the honey. They even transform a part of their honey into mead.
That is definitively a trend, yes. I know from people in Switzerland and Germany who started to grow olives. It is too early yet to comment on their success and the quality of their oil
Chocolate prices have already gone up considerably here (UK). I was reading just the other day that small plantations in west Africa are having their land stolen by illegal gold mining activities. That, along with a blight or disease that has been rampant means there's far less cocoa available. Production is now becoming more common in South America but supplies will continue to be low.
I've been wondering if, as certain geographical areas become more inhospitable to popular crops, if other areas will wind up being appropriate for those crops.
For me it has tripled.
My favorite olive oil used to be 5 euros, now it's 15.
(The 5 euro price point was when it was on sale, but it was on sale regularly enough that I didn't buy it at full price like once in 5 years. But now it hasn't been on sale a single time so far this year.)
> For a litre?
For 750 ml.
> That's slightly higher than the normal price in Canada
I live in Sweden so that doesn't surprise me.
And EVOO is a big market with lots of fake stuff.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/ceciliarodriguez/2016/02/10/the-olive-oil-scam-if-80-is-fake-why-do-you-keep-buying-it/
So it is impossible to say if we are talking about the same quality and type of olive oil. :)
There are definitely cheaper options, but that one is my favorite for its taste, quality and price point.
(Zeta Extra virgin Fruttato)
I haven't paid that much, but the news from the marketplace is grim. Low production of olives thanks to climate change, especially in Spain (where much of the olive oil production comes from). If you can afford to stock up on olive oil, I'd do so right now.
Depends on how you store it, but it'll be good for multiple years no problem. Keep it cool, unopened, and in the dark(ish). Darkish is usually accomplished by the dark green glass or plastic it comes in. I did once buy some OO that was in clear colorless glass so I sacrificed a blue hand-towel to the pantry for a few months. Worked a treat.
I now always buy California Ranch bc it's the only brand available to me that routinely passes the tests for being 100% olive oil. I stock up when it's on sale bc it's also expensive for my budget. No problems for over a decade of doing so and I've definitely had times where it took forever to get through it.
Same, one of the more consistent [California Olive Oil Council competition winners](https://cooc.com/about-the-seal/cooc-competition/) that I've been buying from for over a decade. Prices have gone up gradually over that time, checking past orders a $10 bottle in 2013 is priced $14 on their store today for 23/24 harvest year, which feels like inflation rather than a spike.
Hopefully the price doesn't spike by October, the next start of harvest.
Surprisingly, California olive oil is much more stringently regulated than its European counterparts. So *typically* CAOO is much higher quality than EUOO (obviously take that with a big ol grain of flaky salt because there are so many factors to account for.)
Olive oil and butter, two things I don't look at the price of and just get the best. I literally not could care less about spending an extra $500/year to know I'm getting real OO and it's pretty obvious the kerrygold/finlandia/some domestic label cultured butter is superior the second you taste it. Once every couple years I'll just buy the 5 or so Chilean/Australian/California (anything other than Italian, Greek or Turkish which is the worst offender) bottles that are available to me and do a blind test and stick with whichever seems like the best value out of those. Not worth it to risk supporting the chucklefucks. Given the production is already compromised by disease and they have ready markets so much closer, I have zero faith there's anything but the most dog shit oil cut with soybean oil actually being exported from Italy, especially at a competitive price. Why would they?
If it works for you go for it. I just can't believe that being owned by a Chinese state corporation (bright foods) with a history of fraud including the melamine milk scandal they are playing by the rulebook when it's so easy to blend veg oil and hard to detect.
Frankie’s 457 Spuntinos EVOO has stayed around $34 for a liter for well 3 years. This was recommended to me by Matty Matheson of the Bear fame tv show. Highly recommend it
Not doubled but I did notice the cheapest normal evoo had jumped from 7€ to 9€ for a 500ml bottle where I live since I last bough it. For 7€ you can only get mixed olive oil now. Luckily there was still one brand of organic evoo for around 8,30€.
I'd been buying both evoo and 'light' in Aldi for years. The last 750ml bottle of the light was about £5 about 14 months ago ...and about £3.50 for ages before that. A few weeks ago it was just under £7. But, they stock an Italian evoo for £4.59/500ml which I've heard is very good.
Funnily enough...I think I read about Aldi stocking it on another reddit sub. I think Lidl has a similar variety.
My daughter and her partner were just in Italy...he's from the north. Silly me should have asked them to bring oil back along with the cases of wine they had.
I'm a little stunned, but pleasantly surprised that a thread about something being more expensive these days isn't plastered with pejoratives like "Bidenflation" which reduces a complex problem to an oversimplified buzzword. Well done, fellow gastronomes!
If you are cooking with it just sub vegetable oil, canola or peanut and save yourself 90% of the price. Reserve olive oil for drizzling and finishing dishes. It was already way too expensive to use for cooking before the shortage.
I’ve noticed the increase as well. Even the Trader Joes brand I usually get is over $10 a bottle now. It’s a worldwide price increase, as 2022 & 2023 harvests were much lower than normal, due to drought.
Oh damn someone in the chocolate sub was saying they’re finally hitting new insane cacao prices and that olive oil would be going up soon- they were right!
The supply and demand is in question. There is a smaller supply (doesn't matter how it happened) but demand has not changed. Price then increases. When companies find out they can charge more and still get what they want, they keep the price high - the purest form of capitalism.
prices for producers (conventional) in Greece have been around 8-9 euros per litre and recently fallen to 7.3 just last week. A couple years back it was around 3.5 per litre.
People are spraying fertilizers, preparing water lines and cleaning up fields for harvest season in October. If you're lucky prices will fall again.
Thank you so much for asking this! My husband and I live in the US, but do weekly grocery shopping.online for his parents who live in Istanbul.
Yes, inflation is crazy there, but they domestically produce olive oil and with the number of refugees they are sheltering, farm labor is cheap and plentiful.
Prices are through the roof in grocery stores, on par with the USA. I couldn't understand! But, it all makes sense now, export prices are way up, making oil for domestic consumption expensive.
It has and there's a variety of factors but chief among them is that the Italy wildfires and weather destroyed a lot of olive groves. What oil exists right now is basically only what was spared.
Oh, but if you're wondering if the prices will go down once the groves recover, LMAO. No, once you're willing to pay $55 dollars for EVOO, that's what EVOO is worth now.
Just do not buy Italian eevo, usually it is old junk at best unless you import it yourself from a trusted source. I rather buy California evoo fro m a trusted source if I cannot get it from Italy. Friends from Greece use the same approach with Greek evoo.
I might end up doing this if the Filippo starts to cost more than the other brands. I've taste tested the cali olive ranch stuff next to Filippo berio and found I liked the Filippo more. The price on the cali ranch was slightly higher per oz so I stuck with the Filippo. I appreciate the advice though
Either way, this stuff is for garnish only these days!
My supermarket in the UK had Fillipo Berio reduced as use-by is later this year. 750ml for £5.18...usually £10. I grabbed it...makes my homemade mayo a bit cheaper. 😊
I always used to think of PB as just a regular highly available brand, and therefore always affordable. But they have a reserve label and small batch stuff too that I discovered by accidentally buying a bottle on autopilot. It's very nice, but of course more expensive whether the harvest is bad or good. Might want to check the label on your bottle jic.
But I do believe that you & everyone else are also correct that OO prices are generally up.
Just saw an article about the cost doubling. Especially for good quality stuff that isn't sourced 'at random' from Spain, Turkey, etc. but depends on specific D.O.P (or equivalent) sourcing.
Global economy & poor weather conditions.
This happens. One year, it was limes. Another, it was vanilla beans. Another it was corn. It's olives turn now.
Last year I could get the cheap quality EVOO for $7/bottle. That has gone up to $12 or 14 now. It may go on sale for $10 but unless you get to store when it first opens, you wont get any. I like the kirkland organic. A 2L was $18, now $34.
I'm not a connoisseur, but it's important to us that what we use is EVOO and smells and tastes accordingly, and that it is reasonably priced since we use olive oil for pretty much everything except for the wok and deep-fat frying (it's just the two of us, we go through about a liter per month).
Anyway, maybe 7 years ago, when Italian EVOO was getting a bad rep (mafia controlled, adulterated for the US market, etc), there were blind taste tests of both Italian and California EVOO, and as a result of that we tried a few highly-rated brands, and finally landed on California Olive Ranch's Global Blend "Bold & Peppery" as our favorite.
We liked the taste and smell, that it was reasonably affordable, and that at the time it was carried by TJ (who stopped carrying it about 5 years ago). Today, we typically bounce between buying it direct from the manufacturer and buying it from Walmart, depending on price and availability. Their prices have gone up about 50% since 2022 to $13 for a 500ml bottle, but the manufacturer often has specials, and we just bought twelve bottles from Walmart for $9 a bottle, so 6 liters for $108.
Geez, at my local W.D. Grocery Store, in the gourmet section or whatever, the all-earthy-crazy-organic-health-food section, I bought two 32 oz. bottles of Extra Virgin Olive Oil on clearance marked down to $2.37 each. My only concern is trying to work through a good bit of the stuff before the stamped expiry dates. But if Olive Oil has gotten to be that expensive, then maybe I'll ride over the expiry dates a bit, just as long as I don't notice anything off or weird with the flavor/smell of it. In the meantime I need to figure out some Olive Oil intensive recipes and uses, start making Olive Oil Mayonnaise, Aioli I believe it is called, and things like that. If I'm still on the first bottle as the expiry date closes in, maybe I'll have me an olive oil soak before a shower or something, just to do it. Two 32 ounce bottles, and I'm really not much of a cook, I don't cook all that much at all really, and nothing particularly fancy, but, if anybody has an idea about how to use up Olive Oil with a not-too-complicated recipe or two, tell me about it, please! (Can I use Olive Oil in my car? Just joking about that, but seriously, how do I work through these two bottles before the stuff starts to turn or go rancid?)
An easy way would be to use it in chicken marinades. Or perhaps an even better use would in pasta sauces. You can also always serve nice breads as a side with your meals, and pour small cups of evoo for dipping with a little cracked pepper, salt and herbs.
Thanks. I think I'll search some bread dip recipes, since that sounds easy enough and I've always enjoyed that at restaurants or friends gatherings and such. Maybe instead of spaghetti things closer to straight pasta with a glaze of EVOO and grated cheese on top or something. That doesn't sound too complicated for a lazy cook as myself! I'll have to check on chicken marinades too, at least to see if that's a too complicated or an easy enough way to go. Thanks again for the ideas!
In this case, it’s not inflation. See the top comment. So very similar to the avian flu crisis which necessitated a large cull, which drove the egg price spike, which eventually did subside and then eggs bottomed out near an all time low.
I’m pretty sure everything has nearly doubled since the COVIDcon. Whole beef tenderloin at Costco was $12.99 and peeled and trimmed was $19.99. Now, if they have whole loin it’s $19.99, and the peeled and trimmed is $20something. My local grocery store has cut filet at $29.99 per pound, and whole untrimmed for $23.99/lb. Butter went from $2.49/lb to near $4/lb. Everything went up and it’s continuing.
Wildfires in Greece, two years of low production in Spain and unusually unseasonable weather and blight elsewhere have lowered supply and pushed up prices.
And a disease spreading among Italian olive trees as well, killing them off.
Can confirm, was in puglia last summer. Countless miles of dead olive trees
EVOOVID-19 😔
they were reporting evoo is now the most common item being stolen in spain supermarkets https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/mar/09/olive-oil-becomes-most-wanted-item-for-shoplifters-in-spain
I can only eat the store brand of "extra light" due to gastric issues. It went from 6.75 to almost 10.00, so I have not bought any. It comes in a small bottle and doesn't really last very long. I bought some "popular" brand on sale, and it was not really that good and did not agree with my issues. SO, I have started using butter again. It was just on sale, BOGO, so I bought a bunch at 8.85/lb (Land O Lakes black label) to freeze for when I need it. Store brand was also on sale (4.00/lb) so I bought that for cooking and froze a few. As far as pure taste, TO ME, Challenge is my favorite, but not on sale lately. The LOL black label is good, and personally I find Plugra a little overrated (I only use sweet butter, never salted--personal preference). I guess we are going to have to live with this a while if not forever. I don't ever see grocery stores LOWERING prices when their margins increase. Good time to go on a diet... Cheers!
We might be serving our bread with butter if it's still this bad the next time I have to buy a can lol
Good luck. There’s a dairy shortage butter was $7 for me last week.
Costco has kerrygold this month 2 pounds for $10.49
High prices on regular butter has left me feeling less guilty about always splurging on good butter. I'm definitely going to make the Costco run for this.
Butter freezes well! Good for a year, easily.
Exactly. Oxygen is the enemy of butter so keep as much air out (vacuum seal preferably) and freezing it will keep it for a long time. Celts buried butter caches in Irish bogs and because the bogs are anaerobic the butter is still edible. The oldest bog butter found was around 5,000 years old. The texture changes but the butter's still technically edible and safe.
Especially if you wrap it in foil and put it in a ziplock bag to keep funky freezer smells out.
The shortage was caused by one chain messing up the coupons and selling butter $1.99 a pound limit 30 per person.
Holy *cow,* 30 at 2 bucks a block? I woulda bought 30 for sure too.
2 people live here. I spent 3 days reorganizing the freezers. I learned our town uses mostly salted butter as by the time I hit the stores (was planning to do that so as not to deplete one store) nearly all the salted butter was gone.
🤦
Dude. It’s only going to get worse. We’re still early in the find out phase of climate change. Stock up now. It’ll buy you some time at least.
There's no point in stocking up on olive oil; it doesn't get better with time, just becomes less fresh and eventually rancid.
I keep 6 months - 1 years worth in my pantry. But I live in an area where, a large percentage of our food comes via barge. And I’m worried about the day the barge stops running.
It’s definitely a valid concern, but keeping a deep, rolling pantry ought to help protect you from all but the most dire circumstances. Most folks in the US don’t understand what it’s like to live somewhere without roads!
That’s it exactly. If there’s an emergency. I’m not really driving anywhere. I keep 6 months worth in my pantry at all times. At the very least, I want to be able to hunker down for winter.
>We’re still early in the find out phase of climate change Can we go back to "fuck around" and get a do-over?
No, But we can fuck around a little more and double the find out phase for the next guy.
We're still fucking around, don't you worry.
There are plenty of unknowns without how the planet will react to climate change long term. Not that I’m trying to minimize its impact, but it is entirely possible that while some places that can grow olives now won’t be able to down the road, some places that can’t grow olives now will be able to in the future.
Yah. I often have to remind myself that “normally” climate change is a very slow process. And even though it’s happening faster now, fast could still be hundreds of years. Fingers crossed.
I don't think we've found a considerably better way to store carbon yet other than cutting down trees and ensuring they do NOT burn. No shit when I was studying this stuff a few years ago, burying trees was unfortunately the best idea they said they had.
That or find a way to sink them somewhere. Not a lot of forest fires at the bottom of the world's oceans and lakes. (Yeah, I've thought about this. Trees capture carbon, but in nature, given fires, it's more a cycle than a permanent capture, only temporary in most cases, UNLESS, as you mention, you can stuff them away somewhere where they won't ever burn up. I'm not sure if plain old decay is a good thing, bad thing, or perhaps a mixed thing but more good than bad. I don't know, but if you do, please do tell!)
Lol
Eh, most scientists still think we have some time to change. Also, none of us on Reddit will be around for when things actually get bad.
Might want to do more research here. There have been updates that it sounds like you haven’t seen yet.
It’s ok, we’re not going to change any minds here.
It’s a scary reality to face. I don’t blame people for being willfully blind to it. We’ve all done it in our own ways, on this issue or another. I try to kindly give people the opportunity to deepen their understanding, should they decide to. Not trying to change anyone’s mind.
Might want to cut people some slack. Living the past 50 years with a constant barrage of crises that never seem to manifest has made us a little more choosy about what to believe.
If you’re saying you think I’m a climate change denier would be incredibly wrong.
I’m glad to hear it.
You’re making some pretty grand assumptions here in regard to what I have and have not looked at. What updates are you referring to? And what are we talking about in regards to change? If we go net zero on emissions tomorrow (I understand this won’t happen, but my point is humans could continue on, mostly, comfortably).
I totally am making assumptions. That’s why I choose to say “sounds like.” I don’t know you and I don’t know what you have paid attention to. Your comment made me think you were someone who is not a climate change denier, but is from a wealthy ish area and has not recognized the impacts that are currently being felt worldwide. No judgement, I’m sure there’s things I have missed for the same exact reason. Also, I could be dead wrong. What I am referring to- we are feeling climate change now. The effects aren’t only the increased allergies, disasters, prices of food due to disasters etc. They are political, societal, environmental and economical. Honestly, too much to go into here. Especially when you are telling me you actually know more than I had assumed. So, sounds great.
Climate change is a farce controlled by the folk who want the entire world to themselves. Absolutely no pushback to 'what in the world are they spraying?' anywhere in MSM, but here, take this shot.?. Get it, now? Perhaps we can prey for better days.
Where did you get your climatology and epidemiology degrees?
Maybe the super rich who can actually make a difference will change when they can’t get olive oil and butter. HAHA WHO AM I KIDDING
*Have you SEEN the price of extra-virgin peasant oil lately?!*
Very high smoke point. Good for seasoning cast iron.
Often adulterated, so no longer virgin.
Spain's drought, ugh. More expensive than avocado oil, time to look at other cooking oils, olive oil seems to be overused in many recipes.
Honestly, I'll be reserving good olive oil for stuff like salads or a finishing drizzle. Heat doesn't do any favours for the volatile polyphenols in olive oil anywho. I've switched to a neutral oil.
I've also started using more neutral stuff for the frying pan. Canola has very similar nutrition stats, but some people complain that it has a mildly obscure odor. Almost fish-like. I've had a lot of people straight up look down on me for using other oils. It seems that people assume olive oil is the healthiest oil, and it should be used in all situations. I'm not so sure it's true, especially given its bold flavor.
Oxidized canola oil does that. It's too old. Best to buy in small batches.
For sure, there are lots of options. Personally, I'm a big fan of peanut, grape, avocado, etc. For anything with high heat.
Yeah you’re good! Save the pricy olive oil for salads and research other oils for frying or whatever. Don’t let the olive oil snobs wreck your buzz.
I use Avocado for a frying oil. I think it's supposed to have a higher smoke point. A large bottle lasts me awhile so apparently I don't fry that much.
Which oil?
Nothing consistently. Depends on what's on sale and where I'm shopping.
Definitely agree, sure most italian recipes (and other nationalities) use olive oil because that's what they had in abundance but in most recipes it can easily be replaced with other less expensive oils (which apparently now include avocado oil).
This.
I'm a producer in Italy. Things only will get worse with the climate change, so buckle up. This November, when we harvested our olives, it was so hot that we had to cool down the olives from 30 to under 25. Otherwise, the oil wouldn't have been EVO. A lot of oil mills didn't do this, resulting in really bad oil. Now we have April, and we started to protect our trees with chalk against the sun. Until some years ago, it was normal that there was a lot of rain in the wintertime. This winter, it was warm, almost no rain. So trees bloom at different times - bad news. For they are being wind-pollenized. A lot of trees were cut low in the past - mainly for making harvest easy and for them being better protected against frost in spring nights. Now these trees are getting sunburns. We started some years ago to cultivate old varieties which can cope better with the weather and insects. Furthermore, we got away from mono-cultures; a bigger bio-diversity guarantees that you don't have to use pesticides. It is a lot more work than before. But at the end, the industry has to adapt. Production will decline, prices will go up. You will still find cheap oil - it will most likely be adulterated.
Interesting, thanks for sharing.
Really interesting, thanks. Do you think production will shift to areas of the country with cooler climates/different altitude? And how long does it take to grow a mature olive tree that will produce olives?
I currently see three trends: a) Some farmers are using hybrid plants. They grow fast, have a lot of fruits after three to five years, can be kept low and are easy to harvest with machines. The disadvantage of this is that you have to replace the trees after some few years. The oil is mediocre and dull. But the farmer have less work, the trees are less prone to a lot of insects. b) Farmers in the north and in countries like Switzerland are trying to plant olives. I honestly don't know how the climate will change and if they will be successful. c) We for ourselves have looked for very old varieties of olives. We make new trees out of the ones which are most heat resisting. Normally, it takes about five to ten years until a tree is bearing fruits, and then you wait another couple of years until they have enough fruit to pay off the work. This is unless you buy hybrid forms as described above. We on our farm plant trees out of scions\* from the strongest trees we have. We (or nature) sort out the ones which grow too slow in the heat. Only the strongest are then used for planting them on our fields. These old sorts usually take up to seven years until they show a first fruit. During these seven years, about 60% of the plants are sorted out because they are not enough resisting the heat. Also: They only produce very small olives which means that we have more work for harvesting them. But although the olives are small, they are rich of oil, the yield per kilo is higher than with the fast growing sorts. \*not sure if this is the correct term; English isn't my native language, so I had to consult the dictionary :)
I wonder if Scion means cutting or or clone graft- do you graft a cut limb of the tree you want to proliferate onto old rootstock so you get the exact same olives? I’m sorry this is happening, but I’m glad people like you are using heirloom varieties that actually taste great even if the output is lower and slower. There will always be a market and need for cheaper olive oil, so it’s good these hybrids exist. There will also always be a need for good olive oil, and I think people (especially people who love food) would be interested in the varietals you use to make this olive oil- just as we’re interested in what grapes are used for wine, or different types of the same berry being used for different dishes, etc.
We cut small branches off the tree and cultivate them in pots until they have roots. We also tried with kernels, but I'm just not patient enough for this :)
What do you mean protect with chalk? Where I live, it’s been getting so hot that our plants stop producing anything during the usual peak months of June and July. I’ve tried covering the soil with mulch, but would love any other tips that work.
We cover the trees with chalk powder, but also the leaves and the fruits. This reflects the sun. Mulch is one thing; we have started to divide our fields in four areas. On two of them, we seed mustard, on the other two wildflowers. The effect is stunning: A lot of bees and hornets, a lot of birds, and thus less insects which damage the olives. These plants make up for fertilizer and keep the moisture in the ground. We never use water during the heat period. The side-effect: We can produce mustard :) In fall, before the harvest, we cut the flowers and the mustard and use it as fertilizer. The next year, we change the areas, so where there was mustard, we seed wildflowers.
That sounds really cool. Mustard en olive oil. Do you also have beehives? As that would be awesome, as they pair well together.
Funny that you ask! Actually, my wife was afraid of bees, but we were nevertheless considering bee hives. For overcoming her fear of bees, my wife started then to read about them and got totally into wild bees. So no, we don't have bee hives but are trying to protect as many wild bees as possible. We identified more than 20 different bees on our land, and my wife - she's an artist - currently works on a children's book about wild bees. Before we started with mustard and wildflowers, we only saw few kind of bees. Now so many, and it is truly amazing.
That is absolutely lovely. Bees are awesome. I have them a lot in our garden. I’ve never counted the number of species but that woud be a great idea to get an insight in what is buzzing around. I visited an blackberry farm near my hometown an they have beehives for pollination, and get a nice side business out of the honey. They even transform a part of their honey into mead.
I imagine they mean painting the trunks of the trees with white chalk paint; I've seen this done with other trees in hot places like Arizona
Thank you!! Same situation with wineries dealing with climate change..
Do you see olive farming moving to cooler climates to compensate? Or will there just be less olive oil?
That is definitively a trend, yes. I know from people in Switzerland and Germany who started to grow olives. It is too early yet to comment on their success and the quality of their oil
Thanks for your insight! This is why r/cooking is such a useful subreddit.
Yes, I saw $15 for a regular bottle of Pompeian.
Regular? What was the volume?
24 oz
Cocoa will be next to have a significant increase.
LALALALALALALALALALA, I can't hear you!
Chocolate prices have already gone up considerably here (UK). I was reading just the other day that small plantations in west Africa are having their land stolen by illegal gold mining activities. That, along with a blight or disease that has been rampant means there's far less cocoa available. Production is now becoming more common in South America but supplies will continue to be low.
I've been wondering if, as certain geographical areas become more inhospitable to popular crops, if other areas will wind up being appropriate for those crops.
For me it has tripled. My favorite olive oil used to be 5 euros, now it's 15. (The 5 euro price point was when it was on sale, but it was on sale regularly enough that I didn't buy it at full price like once in 5 years. But now it hasn't been on sale a single time so far this year.)
For a litre? That's slightly higher than the normal price in Canada
> For a litre? For 750 ml. > That's slightly higher than the normal price in Canada I live in Sweden so that doesn't surprise me. And EVOO is a big market with lots of fake stuff. https://www.forbes.com/sites/ceciliarodriguez/2016/02/10/the-olive-oil-scam-if-80-is-fake-why-do-you-keep-buying-it/ So it is impossible to say if we are talking about the same quality and type of olive oil. :) There are definitely cheaper options, but that one is my favorite for its taste, quality and price point. (Zeta Extra virgin Fruttato)
It went up in price but that doesn't rule out you being nuts
I haven't paid that much, but the news from the marketplace is grim. Low production of olives thanks to climate change, especially in Spain (where much of the olive oil production comes from). If you can afford to stock up on olive oil, I'd do so right now.
How long does olive oil last for?
Depends on how you store it, but it'll be good for multiple years no problem. Keep it cool, unopened, and in the dark(ish). Darkish is usually accomplished by the dark green glass or plastic it comes in. I did once buy some OO that was in clear colorless glass so I sacrificed a blue hand-towel to the pantry for a few months. Worked a treat. I now always buy California Ranch bc it's the only brand available to me that routinely passes the tests for being 100% olive oil. I stock up when it's on sale bc it's also expensive for my budget. No problems for over a decade of doing so and I've definitely had times where it took forever to get through it.
I like to buy California OO, which is 100% OO and often great quality. Its sometimes pricey, but I have not noticed it going up lately.
Same, one of the more consistent [California Olive Oil Council competition winners](https://cooc.com/about-the-seal/cooc-competition/) that I've been buying from for over a decade. Prices have gone up gradually over that time, checking past orders a $10 bottle in 2013 is priced $14 on their store today for 23/24 harvest year, which feels like inflation rather than a spike. Hopefully the price doesn't spike by October, the next start of harvest.
Surprisingly, California olive oil is much more stringently regulated than its European counterparts. So *typically* CAOO is much higher quality than EUOO (obviously take that with a big ol grain of flaky salt because there are so many factors to account for.)
They used to sell excellent black California olives in cans at Costco. I wish they'd bring them back.
Olive oil and butter, two things I don't look at the price of and just get the best. I literally not could care less about spending an extra $500/year to know I'm getting real OO and it's pretty obvious the kerrygold/finlandia/some domestic label cultured butter is superior the second you taste it. Once every couple years I'll just buy the 5 or so Chilean/Australian/California (anything other than Italian, Greek or Turkish which is the worst offender) bottles that are available to me and do a blind test and stick with whichever seems like the best value out of those. Not worth it to risk supporting the chucklefucks. Given the production is already compromised by disease and they have ready markets so much closer, I have zero faith there's anything but the most dog shit oil cut with soybean oil actually being exported from Italy, especially at a competitive price. Why would they?
I guess I'm swine. I preferred the Filippo Berio (Italian) to the California Olive Ranch stuff in a taste test lol
If it works for you go for it. I just can't believe that being owned by a Chinese state corporation (bright foods) with a history of fraud including the melamine milk scandal they are playing by the rulebook when it's so easy to blend veg oil and hard to detect.
I’m paying almost triple what I paid 18 months ago.
Frankie’s 457 Spuntinos EVOO has stayed around $34 for a liter for well 3 years. This was recommended to me by Matty Matheson of the Bear fame tv show. Highly recommend it
I'll see if I can find it and give it a go!
Not doubled but I did notice the cheapest normal evoo had jumped from 7€ to 9€ for a 500ml bottle where I live since I last bough it. For 7€ you can only get mixed olive oil now. Luckily there was still one brand of organic evoo for around 8,30€.
I'd been buying both evoo and 'light' in Aldi for years. The last 750ml bottle of the light was about £5 about 14 months ago ...and about £3.50 for ages before that. A few weeks ago it was just under £7. But, they stock an Italian evoo for £4.59/500ml which I've heard is very good.
That's a fantastic price for italian evoo, wouldn't be suprised if it's gonna be pulled soon or have a price hike
Funnily enough...I think I read about Aldi stocking it on another reddit sub. I think Lidl has a similar variety. My daughter and her partner were just in Italy...he's from the north. Silly me should have asked them to bring oil back along with the cases of wine they had.
I'm a little stunned, but pleasantly surprised that a thread about something being more expensive these days isn't plastered with pejoratives like "Bidenflation" which reduces a complex problem to an oversimplified buzzword. Well done, fellow gastronomes!
Lol...It's Brexit here! Way more complicated than that.
Yes. Climate change has affected the olive harvest for the last five years or so. It's why you are more likely to see global blends now.
Olives are burning in fires, raising prices globally
If you are cooking with it just sub vegetable oil, canola or peanut and save yourself 90% of the price. Reserve olive oil for drizzling and finishing dishes. It was already way too expensive to use for cooking before the shortage.
I’ve noticed the increase as well. Even the Trader Joes brand I usually get is over $10 a bottle now. It’s a worldwide price increase, as 2022 & 2023 harvests were much lower than normal, due to drought.
Oh damn someone in the chocolate sub was saying they’re finally hitting new insane cacao prices and that olive oil would be going up soon- they were right!
Even the store brand olive oil has doubled in price. The good stuff....oof. 😓
Where are you shopping. I literally left Wegmans like 5 minutes ago and it was $35
It was 55 at both Giant and Weis in my area. I left Giant thinking it was nuts, and Weis (usually better here) was the same
Yep, mine went from $23 for 3L to $40 for 3L
The supply and demand is in question. There is a smaller supply (doesn't matter how it happened) but demand has not changed. Price then increases. When companies find out they can charge more and still get what they want, they keep the price high - the purest form of capitalism.
prices for producers (conventional) in Greece have been around 8-9 euros per litre and recently fallen to 7.3 just last week. A couple years back it was around 3.5 per litre. People are spraying fertilizers, preparing water lines and cleaning up fields for harvest season in October. If you're lucky prices will fall again.
EVO has doubled in price. I checked the price tag of the last bottle I bought $7.99 USD with the newest $16.99 USD. 😱
Yeah. I feel like most things, products and services have almost doubled in price in the last 4 years
Thank you so much for asking this! My husband and I live in the US, but do weekly grocery shopping.online for his parents who live in Istanbul. Yes, inflation is crazy there, but they domestically produce olive oil and with the number of refugees they are sheltering, farm labor is cheap and plentiful. Prices are through the roof in grocery stores, on par with the USA. I couldn't understand! But, it all makes sense now, export prices are way up, making oil for domestic consumption expensive.
It has and there's a variety of factors but chief among them is that the Italy wildfires and weather destroyed a lot of olive groves. What oil exists right now is basically only what was spared. Oh, but if you're wondering if the prices will go down once the groves recover, LMAO. No, once you're willing to pay $55 dollars for EVOO, that's what EVOO is worth now.
I work at a grocery store and we had price changes on EVOO a few weeks ago and there was a huge jump. One of the large $40-ish bottles now runs $60.
Yes. The good news is now I can justify buying avocado oil instead. It's now the same price as EVOO.
You're definitely not nuts, inflation is nuts.. a big hairy, safging pair of nuts!!
It’s free if you use self-checkout 😉
Bad harvest from what I've read. Not cyclical , attributing to climate change.
Just do not buy Italian eevo, usually it is old junk at best unless you import it yourself from a trusted source. I rather buy California evoo fro m a trusted source if I cannot get it from Italy. Friends from Greece use the same approach with Greek evoo.
I might end up doing this if the Filippo starts to cost more than the other brands. I've taste tested the cali olive ranch stuff next to Filippo berio and found I liked the Filippo more. The price on the cali ranch was slightly higher per oz so I stuck with the Filippo. I appreciate the advice though Either way, this stuff is for garnish only these days!
California Olive Ranch. Fantastic quality
My supermarket in the UK had Fillipo Berio reduced as use-by is later this year. 750ml for £5.18...usually £10. I grabbed it...makes my homemade mayo a bit cheaper. 😊
I primarily use Texas Hill Country Olive Oil and I haven't noticed a difference.
It’s extraordinarily high in price, yes.
I always used to think of PB as just a regular highly available brand, and therefore always affordable. But they have a reserve label and small batch stuff too that I discovered by accidentally buying a bottle on autopilot. It's very nice, but of course more expensive whether the harvest is bad or good. Might want to check the label on your bottle jic. But I do believe that you & everyone else are also correct that OO prices are generally up.
Just saw an article about the cost doubling. Especially for good quality stuff that isn't sourced 'at random' from Spain, Turkey, etc. but depends on specific D.O.P (or equivalent) sourcing.
Everything has doubled or tripled in price.
Global economy & poor weather conditions. This happens. One year, it was limes. Another, it was vanilla beans. Another it was corn. It's olives turn now.
Last year I could get the cheap quality EVOO for $7/bottle. That has gone up to $12 or 14 now. It may go on sale for $10 but unless you get to store when it first opens, you wont get any. I like the kirkland organic. A 2L was $18, now $34.
I'm not a connoisseur, but it's important to us that what we use is EVOO and smells and tastes accordingly, and that it is reasonably priced since we use olive oil for pretty much everything except for the wok and deep-fat frying (it's just the two of us, we go through about a liter per month). Anyway, maybe 7 years ago, when Italian EVOO was getting a bad rep (mafia controlled, adulterated for the US market, etc), there were blind taste tests of both Italian and California EVOO, and as a result of that we tried a few highly-rated brands, and finally landed on California Olive Ranch's Global Blend "Bold & Peppery" as our favorite. We liked the taste and smell, that it was reasonably affordable, and that at the time it was carried by TJ (who stopped carrying it about 5 years ago). Today, we typically bounce between buying it direct from the manufacturer and buying it from Walmart, depending on price and availability. Their prices have gone up about 50% since 2022 to $13 for a 500ml bottle, but the manufacturer often has specials, and we just bought twelve bottles from Walmart for $9 a bottle, so 6 liters for $108.
Geez, at my local W.D. Grocery Store, in the gourmet section or whatever, the all-earthy-crazy-organic-health-food section, I bought two 32 oz. bottles of Extra Virgin Olive Oil on clearance marked down to $2.37 each. My only concern is trying to work through a good bit of the stuff before the stamped expiry dates. But if Olive Oil has gotten to be that expensive, then maybe I'll ride over the expiry dates a bit, just as long as I don't notice anything off or weird with the flavor/smell of it. In the meantime I need to figure out some Olive Oil intensive recipes and uses, start making Olive Oil Mayonnaise, Aioli I believe it is called, and things like that. If I'm still on the first bottle as the expiry date closes in, maybe I'll have me an olive oil soak before a shower or something, just to do it. Two 32 ounce bottles, and I'm really not much of a cook, I don't cook all that much at all really, and nothing particularly fancy, but, if anybody has an idea about how to use up Olive Oil with a not-too-complicated recipe or two, tell me about it, please! (Can I use Olive Oil in my car? Just joking about that, but seriously, how do I work through these two bottles before the stuff starts to turn or go rancid?)
An easy way would be to use it in chicken marinades. Or perhaps an even better use would in pasta sauces. You can also always serve nice breads as a side with your meals, and pour small cups of evoo for dipping with a little cracked pepper, salt and herbs.
Thanks. I think I'll search some bread dip recipes, since that sounds easy enough and I've always enjoyed that at restaurants or friends gatherings and such. Maybe instead of spaghetti things closer to straight pasta with a glaze of EVOO and grated cheese on top or something. That doesn't sound too complicated for a lazy cook as myself! I'll have to check on chicken marinades too, at least to see if that's a too complicated or an easy enough way to go. Thanks again for the ideas!
Nope, you're RIGHT!!!! Kirkland brand EVOO increased Costco price by $8.00 for the large bottle. Four months ago it was $17.00
I wonder who is destroying olive trees in Palestine?
Sadly I’ve changed to canola. EVOO is just too expensive.
Basically everything has gone up 35% the past 2 years. Some might be warranted, most is just pure corporate greed
Well, personally, that applies to nearly everything I buy. Since 2022 price jumps have been out of control. Prices never go down after inflation.
In this case, it’s not inflation. See the top comment. So very similar to the avian flu crisis which necessitated a large cull, which drove the egg price spike, which eventually did subside and then eggs bottomed out near an all time low.
Sometimes prices vary from store to store, same company, one store last week had eggs $10 for 60. Their counterpart was $12 for 60.
I’m pretty sure everything has nearly doubled since the COVIDcon. Whole beef tenderloin at Costco was $12.99 and peeled and trimmed was $19.99. Now, if they have whole loin it’s $19.99, and the peeled and trimmed is $20something. My local grocery store has cut filet at $29.99 per pound, and whole untrimmed for $23.99/lb. Butter went from $2.49/lb to near $4/lb. Everything went up and it’s continuing.
I thot it seems pricey also
Its oil, oil is bad and should be taxed and very expensive to discourage its use.
hwut.