Producers in California Expect a Return to Normal Yields This Season

Producers and offi­cials across California are expect­ing a return to nor­malcy this year after a series of unusual weather events led to a large pro­duc­tion decrease in the 2018/19 crop year.

“My esti­mate for this year will likely be close to 4.0 mil­lion gal­lons [around 13,800 tons],” Patricia Darragh, the exec­u­tive direc­tor of the California Olive Oil Council (COOC), told Olive Oil Times. ​“In 2018, pro­duc­tion was way down due to weather issues in the first quar­ter. Last year we had about 1.6 to 1.8 mil­lion gal­lons pro­duced. A sig­nif­i­cant decrease.”

Last year, a series of unusual weather events includ­ing an early bloom and late frost led to a 57 per­cent decrease in olive oil pro­duc­tion, which was far lower than had been orig­i­nally antic­i­pated. Many farm­ers lost most or all of their olive crops and sev­eral pro­duc­ers had no oil to sell to their usual clients.

“Last year was very dif­fi­cult with many of our groves expe­ri­enc­ing poor pro­duc­tion,” Cliff Little, the pres­i­dent of Corto Olive, told Olive Oil Times. ​“In some cases the crop was so poor that we did­n’t even har­vest. I don’t expect that to be the case this year.”

Little added that he had been expect­ing a very big year in terms of pro­duc­tion, but spring rains slightly damp­ened these prospects.

“I don’t think it will be the best crop year that we have seen in California, in regards to vol­ume,” he said. ​“However, we expect sig­nif­i­cant increases over last year.”

Corto Olive are not the only ones expect­ing a big rebound in pro­duc­tion this year. At California Olive Ranch, the largest olive oil pro­ducer in the state, new CEO Michael Fox told Olive Oil Times that he expected a return to nor­malcy.

“We are feel­ing good about this year’s har­vest,” he said. ​“Last year was a his­tor­i­cally bad har­vest for all of California and we feel we are return­ing to more tra­di­tional vol­umes.”

While the COOC and pro­duc­ers will ulti­mately have to wait until the begin­ning of the har­vest in October and November to see how accu­rate their pre­dic­tions are, pro­duc­ers from across the state are hop­ing to recoup some finan­cial losses incurred by last season’s poor har­vest.

“Last year we had almost noth­ing, but man­aged to squeeze out enough oil to keep us going,” Richard Meisler, the co-owner of San Miguel Olive Farm, told Olive Oil Times. ​“This year pro­duc­tion will be plen­ti­ful. We will be in a great posi­tion and could very well make up the loss.”

Little is also con­fi­dent that this year’s har­vest will help make up for last year, in which Corto Olive could not meet their cus­tomers’ full demand for olive oil and had to put all of them on allo­ca­tion.

“We are hope­ful that increases in pro­duc­tion this year will help to off­set some of the finan­cial hard­ship our groves felt from last year,” he said. “[We] are con­fi­dent that we will have enough oil to meet our mar­kets demand mov­ing for­ward.”

All of the pro­duc­ers inter­viewed for this story by Olive Oil Times said that they were antic­i­pat­ing good qual­ity from their oils this year, as they do almost every year.

The chal­lenge for the whole California olive oil sec­tor mov­ing for­ward will be ensur­ing suf­fi­cient pro­duc­tion. Producers in the state learned a long time ago how to man­age the nat­ural on and off-years expe­ri­enced by olive trees, but will now need to adapt to a more tur­bu­lent cli­mate as well.

Phil Asquith, the owner of Ojai Olive Oil, told Olive Oil Times that he suf­fered a sig­nif­i­cant pro­duc­tion decrease from his own olive groves last year, but was able to buy enough olives in order to keep his pro­duc­tion sta­ble.

“Our pro­duc­tion is the same every year, as we specif­i­cally tar­get to pur­chase enough olives beyond our own to get to exactly what we need,” he said.

As a result of this strat­egy, Asquith said that he does not need earn­ings from this year’s har­vest to makeup for the pre­vi­ous one.

“It doesn’t really work that way for us, but this year will cer­tainly be bet­ter than last year, and bet­ter for grow­ers,” he said. ​“That being said, peo­ple are used to the cycli­cal nature of the har­vests, and to the swings being espe­cially large these days, so noth­ing is unex­pected.”