Texas Olive Oil Producers Eye Formation of Advisory Board

“We’re not try­ing to re-invent the wheel,” Cathy Bernell said with a laugh. ​“We’re look­ing to get on the wagon.”

Bernell is a board mem­ber of the Texas Association of Olive Oil (TXAOO) as well as an olive farmer and oil pro­ducer in east­ern Texas, who is try­ing to estab­lish and enforce olive oil qual­ity stan­dards in the state.

Last week, she went up to the Hill in Austin and sat in on a hear­ing at the Agriculture and Livestock Committee of the state’s House of Representatives. Members of the TXAOO made their case to become an advi­sory board.

“[The hear­ing] went beyond expec­ta­tions. It was ter­rific,” Bernell told Olive Oil Times. ​“We were extremely well received by the leg­isla­tive mem­bers. And we had mem­bers of our indus­try show up.”

She thor­oughly believes that the Texas olive oil sec­tor could only ben­e­fit from form­ing an advi­sory board.

Those ben­e­fits could come in the form of grant fund­ing from the Texas Department of Agriculture (TDA) and U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA); the imple­men­ta­tion and enforce­ment of qual­ity stan­dards for vir­gin and extra vir­gin olive oil; and fund­ing for olive-spe­cific edu­ca­tional pro­grams at uni­ver­si­ties, akin to the University of California, Davis Olive Center

“The pur­pose of that is basi­cally to have [the leg­is­la­ture] rec­og­nize our indus­try in such a man­ner that when fed­eral funds, state funds, leg­is­la­tion, any of those come along, that we’re a con­sid­er­a­tion,” Bernell said. ​“They’re not just going to think about pecans and peaches now, they’re going to think about olives as well.”

In order to offi­cially become an advi­sory board, the TXAOO must send a peti­tion to the TDA. Then it will be up to the com­mis­sioner, Sid Miller, to approve the peti­tion or not.

Last week’s meet­ing at the Texas House of Representatives was the first step toward mak­ing and sub­mit­ting the peti­tion. Bernell said that the Dan Hunter, the assis­tant com­mis­sioner, had whole­heart­edly given his sup­port to the TXAOO, leav­ing the impres­sion that a peti­tion would be approved once it was sub­mit­ted.

“It is my under­stand­ing from the com­mis­sioner that it’s not a prob­lem,” Bernell said. ​“I don’t want to call it a slam dunk because noth­ing ever is, but I think we’re on a very pos­i­tive path with that.”

Mark Loeffler, a spokesman for the TDA, said that the depart­ment had not yet received an offi­cial peti­tion from the TXAOO and did not com­ment on the like­li­hood of its imme­di­ate approval. However, he told Olive Oil Times that the TDA is fully sup­port­ive of the sec­tor and believes it has great poten­tial.

“The Texas olive oil indus­try has unlim­ited poten­tial for growth as it offers oppor­tu­ni­ties at the retail and restau­rant level, and agri­tourism,” he said. ​“Commissioner Miller has worked hard to ensure TDA has the lead role in pro­mot­ing Texas-grown prod­ucts, at home and around the world.”

Among the ways in which the TDA already sup­ports the olive sec­tor is through award­ing spe­cialty crop grants to the TXAOO and pro­vid­ing fund­ing through the Young Farmer Grant Program.

Specialty crop grants may be applied for by Texas fruit and veg­etable farm­ers on a bian­nual basis and pro­vide fund­ing ​“to enhance the com­pet­i­tive­ness of spe­cialty crops.” According to the TDA, the funds may be used for mar­ket­ing and indus­try devel­op­ment, both of which Bernell believes are cru­cial for grow­ing the sec­tor.

The Young Farmer Grant Program matches dol­lar-for-dol­lar any invest­ment in cre­at­ing or expand­ing a Texas agri­cul­tural busi­ness up to $20,000. All appli­cants must be under the age of 46 in order to be eli­gi­ble for the fund­ing.

However, Bernell believes the for­ma­tion of an advi­sory board would be a more effec­tive way to pro­vide fund­ing for the three main tar­gets of the TXAOO: research, mar­ket­ing and stan­dard­iza­tion.

Christopher Kasmiroski is the owner of Texas Angel Oil, which oper­ates in east­ern Texas. He told Olive Oil Times that while he was unaware of the push for reg­u­la­tion by the TXAOO, he believes that the estab­lish­ment of stan­dards will spur growth in the sec­tor.

“I will say a long-held belief I still hold is that I hope any reg­u­la­tion encour­ages new entre­pre­neurs to enter into the olive oil indus­try,” he said.

Currently, there are no stan­dards for Texas olive oil pro­duc­ers and the TDA has no hand in reg­u­lat­ing the indus­try.

“We kind of have a gen­tle­man’s agree­ment that we will use California’s stan­dards,” Bernell said. Once the advi­sory board is set up and stan­dards have been estab­lished, she hopes that the TDA can then begin to col­lect and test sam­ples, act­ing as an enforcer.

She also hopes the more avail­able funds will allow for research into deter­min­ing which olive vari­eties grow best in dif­fer­ent parts of Texas as well as how to mit­i­gate the effects of early spring thaws and freezes. The lat­ter hap­pened in January 2017, when an 89-degree day quickly turned into a 25-degree one, dam­ag­ing some olive crops in the state.

In Bernell’s view, edu­ca­tion comes hand-in-hand with research. She looks to California, where the UC Davis Olive Center has cre­ated a gen­er­a­tion of olive-spe­cific aca­d­e­mics in the state that has become syn­ony­mous with American-made olive oil. Bernell wants Texas to shift this par­a­digm.

“We need accred­ited uni­ver­si­ties to edu­cate our young peo­ple in olives just the same way they do with grapes,” she said. ​“I know Texas A&M, Sam Houston State University and Texas Tech are all on board with the olive indus­try and they would all very much wel­come some­thing along the line of an olive cen­ter.”

The prob­lem, again, comes back to fund­ing. Bernell once again cir­cles back to the impor­tance of the advi­sory board, which is the com­mon denom­i­na­tor in get­ting this vision for Texas olive oil off of the ground.

Once the advi­sory board is estab­lished the next step will be to begin the leg­isla­tive process to cre­ate the stan­dards and enforce­ment mech­a­nisms. The Texas House of Representatives is out of ses­sion until January 2019.

Until then, Bernell and oth­ers at the TXAOO are speak­ing to mem­bers of the asso­ci­a­tion, which is com­posed of the major­ity of the state’s olive grow­ers, in order to deter­mine what their wants and needs are. She has also enlisted a for­mer TDA offi­cial-turned-lob­by­ist to help nav­i­gate the leg­isla­tive process.

“Then the next step is to get the leg­is­la­tion writ­ten in con­junc­tion with our mem­bers to make sure that our mem­bers are on board and agree with the path that we’re on,” she said. ​“And again, we’re not rein­vent­ing the wheel, we’re def­i­nitely pulling from every­body’s stan­dards and leg­is­la­tion, from California to Australia, and learn­ing from them.”

Texas may be a new arrival to the sec­tor, but Bernell does not count out a mete­oric rise from Lone Star State pro­duc­ers. After all, Texas gen­er­ates the sec­ond-largest amount of rev­enue from sell­ing agri­cul­tural prod­ucts in the U.S. (California is the only state that gen­er­ates more.)

“The infra­struc­ture in Texas for such a young indus­try is quite good. We have a num­ber of mills, we have a num­ber of depend­able part­ners, we have the mobile mill,” Bernell said. ​“We’re basi­cally look­ing to become a domes­tic sup­plier of olives and extra vir­gin olive oil at a sub­stan­tial level.”