Organic Olive Oil Remains Small Share of Spain’s Growing Organic Food Market

Summary

Organic olive oils make up 1.76 per­cent of over­all fam­ily spend­ing on organic food in Spain, with annual per capita spend­ing on organic food reach­ing €66. Despite Spain’s sig­nif­i­cant role in European organic food pro­duc­tion, domes­tic con­sump­tion remains lim­ited due to con­sumer aware­ness issues sur­round­ing the Euroleaf organic cer­ti­fi­ca­tion logo.

Latest data show that organic olive oils rep­re­sent 1.76 per­cent of over­all fam­ily spend­ing on organic food in Spain.

According to the 2025 Yearly Report just released by the Organic Production Professional Association Ecovalia, annual per capita spend­ing on organic food reached €66, about three per­cent more than the year before. While 50 per­cent of that spend­ing goes to ani­mal prod­ucts, 44 per­cent is allo­cated to plant-based prod­ucts.

Organic olive oil remains a mar­ginal share of over­all organic con­sump­tion, a pat­tern observed repeat­edly in recent years.

For fam­i­lies and restau­rants, organic spend­ing accounts for 3.2 per­cent of annual food expen­di­tures. Over the same period, the over­all organic mar­ket grew by three per­cent, reach­ing €3.14 bil­lion in 2024, with house­holds account­ing for €2.733 bil­lion.

Household con­sump­tion pat­terns show that roughly two out of three Spanish house­holds buy organic prod­ucts. Still, that rel­a­tively high pen­e­tra­tion con­trasts with low pur­chas­ing inten­sity, as only 36 per­cent of the pop­u­la­tion con­sumes organic food more than once a week.

Ecovalia noted that organic pur­chas­ing is sig­nif­i­cantly higher in north­ern Europe, where per capita spend­ing reaches €220 in Sweden and €362 in Denmark.

According to Álvaro Barrera, pres­i­dent of Ecovalia, Spain’s progress in organic con­sump­tion is notable but still lim­ited in a broader European con­text. ​“We have gone from €26 to €66 per capita in recent years, which shows that the sec­tor is advanc­ing. However, France is already at around €176 per per­son, and other coun­tries are even higher. This means we still have con­sid­er­able room for growth in domes­tic con­sump­tion,” Barrera said to El País.

Even so, within the European con­text, Spain remains a pow­er­house in organic food pro­duc­tion, with more than 3.1 mil­lion hectares of cer­ti­fied organic farm­land, mak­ing it one of the continent’s largest pro­duc­ers. Olive groves, along with nuts and cere­als, are among the lead­ing crops by sur­face area.

In Spain, the organic sec­tor remains struc­turally agri­cul­tural and less focused on pro­cess­ing or other high-value activ­i­ties. Of the more than 68,000 reg­is­tered organic oper­a­tors, about 84 per­cent are pri­mary pro­duc­ers.

Ecovalia said those trends under­line Spain’s cen­tral role in European organic food pro­duc­tion, while also high­light­ing the slow pace of growth in domes­tic con­sump­tion.

By con­trast, demand from abroad remains strong. According to Ecovalia, export-ori­ented organic activ­ity in the coun­try grew by 105 per­cent in 2023, help­ing to off­set weak domes­tic demand and strengthen exports.

Still, export-related busi­nesses account for only about one per­cent of Spain’s more than 68,000 organic oper­a­tors, a sec­tor still dom­i­nated by pri­mary pro­duc­ers rather than export-focused com­pa­nies.

While the report does not pro­vide a full prod­uct-by-prod­uct regional break­down, it shows that Andalusia and the Valencian Community are lead­ing the expan­sion of organic food exports. Given the impor­tance of olive grow­ing in those regions and the large area devoted to organic groves, olive oil is likely play­ing a sig­nif­i­cant role in that out­ward growth.

Ecovalia’s report points to con­sumer aware­ness as a key con­straint on the growth of Spain’s organic mar­ket. While the European Union’s organic cer­ti­fi­ca­tion logo, the Euroleaf, is widely rec­og­nized by con­sumers, its mean­ing is not fully under­stood.

When asked with­out visual cues, many con­sumers instead iden­tify other labels, such as pro­tected des­ig­na­tions of ori­gin, reveal­ing per­sis­tent con­fu­sion between cer­ti­fi­ca­tion sys­tems and label­ing schemes.

That gap lim­its the effec­tive­ness of organic label­ing as a dri­ver of pur­chas­ing deci­sions. According to the report, the Euroleaf remains the only offi­cially reg­u­lated guar­an­tee of com­pli­ance with E.U. organic stan­dards, but recog­ni­tion of its mean­ing still needs to improve.

Ecovalia said clearer, more coor­di­nated com­mu­ni­ca­tion and pub­lic cam­paigns will be needed to help con­sumers bet­ter under­stand what the label stands for.