Agriculture: EU product prices fall by 1.9 per cent in the fourth quarter of 2025 compared to the previous year

Brussels – In the fourth quarter of 2025, the average price of agricultural products in the European Union fell by 1.9 per cent compared to the same period in 2024. This was announced today (12 March) by Eurostat, the EU’s statistical office, in a  report on agriculture that takes into account the value of the so-called “output price”, i.e., the price at which agricultural producers sell their goods to wholesalers or distributors, from whom end consumers purchase them. 

The decline in prices recorded in the last three months of last year follows three consecutive increases in the previous quarters: +2.6 per cent year-on-year in the January–March 2025 period, +5.89 per cent in the April–June period, and +4.43 per cent in the July–September period. Among the most widely consumed products that experienced the largest price decreases were milk (-4.1 per cent) and cereals (-8.9 per cent). 

Turning to the state-by-state analysis, as many as 15 EU countries benefited from price reductions in primary sector production. The top three are Belgium (down 12.9 per cent compared to the last quarter of 2024), Lithuania (down 8.2 per cent), and Germany (down 6 per cent). In the other 12 Member States, however, average prices rose, with peaks recorded in Ireland (+8.2 per cent), Slovenia (+5.6 per cent), and Malta (+4.2 per cent). In Italy, the trend is downward, although the change is less than one percentage point. 

The Eurostat report also analyses trends in the prices of production inputs, i.e. the goods and services that farmers currently use for their activities. Unlike outputs, the cost of production factors in the last three months of 2025 remained substantially unchanged compared to the same period in 2024, in line with a trend that was “relatively stable” throughout last year. More specifically, individual inputs showed different dynamics. The price of fertilisers and soil improvers, for example, rose by 7.9 per cent, while the price of feed and energy fell by 2.7 and 1.7 per cent respectively. 

The figures for the various Member States are equally varied. Belgium remains among the top three countries with the largest cost declines (-2.1 per cent compared to the fourth quarter of 2024), together with Cyprus (-2.6 per cent) and Sweden (-2 per cent). Conversely, the most significant increases were recorded in Lithuania (+4.2 per cent), Ireland (+3.3 per cent) and Romania (+2.5 per cent). Italy is also among the countries where agricultural production factors have increased, by around 1 per cent.