Andalusia finally puts a number on it: 1.26 million tonnes of olive oil, up 24%

When we covered Andalusia's first crop estimate and the growers who pushed back in early September, the one thing missing was a number. The regional ministry was saying "high production" without publishing a figure, and we noted that gap explicitly at the time. The figure arrived on 29 September.

Ramón Fernández-Pacheco, Andalusia's Regional Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries, Water and Rural Development, presented the 2026/27 aforo — the region's official pre-harvest crop forecast — in Mengíbar, in the province of Jaén.

The number

According to the ministry's announcement, the oil forecast exceeds not only last season but the average of the past five seasons by 44%. For table olives the same comparison is 7.2%. That distinction matters: this is not a good year inside a normal range, it is a year in which the level itself has moved up.

The weight sits in Jaén

Jaén alone accounts for almost half of Andalusian oil, and its extraction yield is expected to run close to 20%. The mill-olive figures tell the same story: Jaén 2,890,000 tonnes (42.2%), Córdoba 1,985,200 tonnes (28.9%).

For table olives the ranking changes and the centre of gravity shifts to Sevilla: Sevilla 320,000 tonnes, Córdoba 70,066 tonnes, Málaga 63,373 tonnes. The variety split is given as Hojiblanca 60%, Manzanilla 31%, Gordal 5% — meaning Andalusia's table-olive identity rests very heavily on a single cultivar. Anyone sourcing Spanish table olives is, in practice, sourcing Hojiblanca with a Manzanilla tail.

The organic increase is sharper still: 60,400 tonnes of organic olive oil is expected, 80.5% more than in the 2024/25 season. Half of that comes from a single province, Córdoba, at 30,180 tonnes, with Jaén at 14,860 tonnes. Almería's forecast of more than 2,000 tonnes corresponds to a 370% jump. Organic mill olives represent 8.3% of all mill olives, and the organic olive area on record for 2025 is 132,124 hectares.

The announcement also carries a labour estimate: 21.6 million day-wages, of which 63.7% is harvest work proper, with more than a third of the total again falling in Jaén. In a region where the harvest is still the largest seasonal employer, that number is read as closely as the tonnage.

The growers' warning became part of the forecast's reasoning

The most interesting detail here is not the number but the explanation attached to it. Fernández-Pacheco described the season this way: a very rainy winter supported the crop's development, but temperatures well above the usual averages limited the productive potential.

That is precisely what the Sevilla cooperatives and COAG had argued in early September. At that meeting the deputy minister spoke optimistically while growers said the recent heat would move the figure. The objection was not dismissed; three weeks later it appeared inside the official forecast's own framing. It is not common in this sector for a field-level objection to surface as published reasoning, and this is one of those cases.

⚠ Even so, an aforo is a forecast. The test set by cooperative chairman Gabriel Cabello López — "these figures will not be settled until November" — applies to this number as well. An aforo is not realised production, and it should not be quoted as though it were.

What it means from Turkey

Our own site data is enough to set the scale: Turkey's 2025-26 olive oil crop is estimated at 310,000 tonnes by UZZK, the national official assessment committee. Andalusia, a single region, expects more than four times that.

The price side matters more than the volume. In the EU producer price series for the week of 20 September, extra virgin in Jaén stood at €3.42/kg, the Spanish average at €3.47/kg, and Italy at €4.82/kg. So a record supply forecast is landing on a price floor that was already soft. In Turkey, the extra virgin price registered at the Edremit exchange on 25 September was 298.23 TL/kg — roughly €5.4/kg at that day's ECB rate. If Andalusia delivers anything close to this aforo, the gap between Turkish and Spanish bulk oil could widen further this season, and Turkish exporters will feel it in contract negotiations rather than in headline production figures.

⚠ Do not compare those two prices one to one: one is the EU's weekly producer price series, the other is a registration at a single exchange. They are not the same measurement and only give a sense of magnitude.

Reading notes

⚠ The aforo covers Andalusia, not all of Spain. Because Andalusia holds roughly 80% of Spain's olive area it is treated as an indicator, but it is not the national total.

⚠ The organic increase is measured against 2024/25, while the other figures are measured against 2025/26. That is how the source presents them, and we have left it that way rather than forcing a single baseline.

⚠ Turkey's own 2026-27 estimate does not exist yet. The field assessment that began in Manisa in early September will produce it, and when it does it deserves exactly the caution Andalusia has just applied to its own number.