Summary: Olive oil prices spiked in 2023 amid heat and drought in Spain, prompting widespread claims that climate change was driving the industry into crisis. Production has since rebounded and prices have fallen sharply, undercutting the hysteria, but no corrections have been issued. The episode illustrates how short-term agricultural disruptions are sometimes unreasonably framed as evidence of long-term climate catastrophe.
It’s the follow-up story that never gets written. An agricultural commodity experiences a period of below-average yields and rising prices, and it is reported as a climate change–induced crisis. Then, after another year or two, the trend reverses, but there are few, if any, attempts to correct the record.
Olive oil prices are a recent example. Spain, the world’s largest producer of olives for oil, experienced severe heat and drought in the summers of 2022 and 2023, contributing to much lower yields and major price spikes in 2023 and into 2024.
There were several news accounts at the time warning about a new reality in which human-induced warming would decimate olive yields. An August 2023 CNN story entitled “Olive Oil is in Trouble as Extreme Heat and Drought Push the Industry Into Crisis” was typical. Citing scientists and industry experts, the article told us that the episode “would have been virtually impossible without climate change.”
The story, and others like it, painted a bleak future for those making their living from olives and a new normal of higher olive oil prices for consumers. Beyond olives, CNN informed readers that “Experts warn of worse to come for food production, as the human-caused climate crisis increases the frequency and severity of extreme weather.”
However, toward the end of 2024, olive oil prices began falling sharply and remain well below their peak, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. The two most recent crops in Spain and other olive-growing nations have yielded enough to increase olive oil production substantially. Overall, the olive oil industry appears to be most of the way back to normal—hardly a crisis.
That should have surprised no one, especially the self-described experts relied upon in the gloomy coverage. Yields for olives, as with virtually every other agricultural commodity, have experienced year-to-year fluctuations throughout recorded history. While climate change’s influence on olives is entirely possible, an off year or two proves nothing. Over the longer term, overall yields for food crops have increased severalfold, especially in recent decades, when climate change was supposedly a headwind. Improved agricultural methods—which depend on fossil fuels for energy and fertilizer—have swamped any adverse climate impacts, if such impacts exist.
It is also worth noting the substantial scientific evidence that the release of carbon dioxide, blamed for contributing to climate change, has benefits for plant growth and may well be a net positive for agriculture. This may also help explain why agricultural bad news rarely has staying power while long-term trends remain positive.
In any event, the media outlets that raised the olive oil alarms ought to publish follow-up stories reporting the good news and conceding that the climate change link is not nearly as clear-cut as the original coverage suggested. None have done so.
Maybe it’s because they are too busy writing about the chocolate crisis.