Söke Commodity Exchange chair: olive oil at 120-170 lira, "neither the mill nor the grower is earning"

As the harvest continues in Söke, in Aydın province, olive oil prices are satisfying neither growers nor mills. According to a statement by Söke Commodity Exchange chair Ahmet Nejat Sağel that reached the local press on 13 November 2026, oil with 5 per cent acidity trades at 120 lira and oil with 0.5 per cent acidity at 170 lira on the exchange. Sağel said the state needs to give support that satisfies growers if production is to be sustainable.

What Sağel said

• Harvesting of the Gemlik and Domat varieties continues in Söke and the surrounding area; the region's important Memecik has not started yet. Sağel expects the Memecik harvest, widely grown around Bağarası, to begin at the end of November.
• The price fall is not specific to Türkiye; farm product prices are falling worldwide.
• "Neither the mill nor the grower is earning." Prices are not at a satisfactory level for either side.
• "Our citizens in the rural neighbourhoods whose only income is olives are in a difficult position. When the harvest season came, the region used to smile. Today the grower is wondering how he will harvest his olives."

The report does not state the unit of the prices. Because exchange registrations are usually published in TRY/kg, we make the comparison below on a per-kilogram assumption; that assumption is ours.

Next to neighbouring exchanges

By our calculation Söke's 0.5 per cent oil is about 13 per cent below the extra virgin registration at the Nazilli exchange in the same province, and about 31 per cent below Edremit's 13 November extra virgin registration. The 5 per cent oil is 20 per cent below Edremit's 3 November crude oil registration. Exchange rows are single registrations, not averages, and the dates, volumes and acidity of the oil may not match. The differences should therefore be read as a comparison of levels rather than a precise price gap. The weekly table can be followed in our bulletin page.

The Spain account

Sağel said cooperatives in Spain decided not to sell the oil they hold, that about 180,000 tonnes have not been released to the market, and that the aim is to stop prices falling further. The official decision we reported earlier may match this but is not the same thing: the Spanish Ministry of Agriculture's decision, published in the official gazette on 6 November, obliges mills to keep 12 per cent of the production they declare in storage until 30 September 2027; the ministry's estimate of the volume to be withdrawn is about 188,000 tonnes (details in our article). So the figure is close, but the ministry decision is a mandatory rule, not a voluntary cooperative decision. We cannot tell from the report which one Sağel meant.

Harvest calendar

Memecik running into late November is a familiar picture for the region: Aydın Memecik olive oil carries a geographical indication and the variety is the region's main oil olive. Today's exchange prices are therefore forming at a time when the region's main oil harvest has not yet started; supply and the price picture may change once Memecik comes in. The direction of that cannot be stated from today's data.

What the report leaves out

Sağel did not say what kind of support he wants (a premium, credit or a purchase guarantee). The report also does not say on which day and in what volume the prices formed, or whether the "5 acid" and "0.5 acid" figures are registered exchange averages or the general level at the time of speaking. We covered how prices opened in the region in our season-opening article and the reasons behind a similar fall in Mersin in the Mersin report.