Wildfires Unlikely to Impact 2019 Production Figures in California

The 2019 wild­fire sea­son has come to an end in California. In spite of being the small­est fire sea­son since 2011 – in terms of acres destroyed – sev­eral blazes burned through­out the state’s olive-grow­ing regions.

While wild­fires destroyed crop­land and res­i­den­tial prop­er­ties in Kern, Monterrey, Los Angeles, Riverside, San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara, Sonoma, Sutter, Tehama, Ventura and Yolo coun­ties – all of which are olive pro­duc­ing regions – few farm­ers reported dam­age to their crops.

The California Olive Oil Council (COOC) had pre­vi­ously esti­mated that the 2019 har­vest in California would yield about 13,800 tons. While some in the sec­tor believe this fig­ure was a bit too opti­mistic, over­all olive oil pro­duc­tion is not expected to be impacted by the wild­fires.

“I have heard that the peri­odic power shut­downs by the power com­pa­nies in wild­fire-prone areas dur­ing peri­ods of high wind did affect at least one proces­sor, and this may have impacted their oper­a­tion for a lim­ited period,” Dan Flynn, the exec­u­tive direc­tor of the UC Davis Olive Center, told Olive Oil Times.

“I have not heard that the wild­fires have been a major fac­tor on olive oil qual­ity and quan­tity, but I also have not had com­pre­hen­sive dis­cus­sions with grow­ers about this,” he added.

Patricia King, the new exec­u­tive direc­tor of the COOC, told Olive Oil Times that it was still too early to tell what the final har­vest would be and did not com­ment on whether wild­fires would have an impact.

“We will not know the final pro­duc­tion until approx­i­mately late May, as we are cur­rently in the process of cer­ti­fy­ing the oils,” she said.

Olive grow­ers have largely been spared the fate of wine pro­duc­ers, who are likely to suf­fer much larger set­backs in light of the Kincade fire that raged through Sonoma county.

Olives sur­vived the vir­u­lent fire sea­son thanks to their wider win­dow for har­vest. Unlike wine grapes, which require har­vest­ing dur­ing very spe­cific win­dows, often as short as a sin­gle night, olives that will be pressed for oil can be viably har­vested over sev­eral weeks or months.

Both grapes and olives are del­i­cate fruits and are extremely sen­si­tive to smoke dam­age, rel­a­tive to heartier crops grown in the region such as almonds and gar­lic. The threat comes from volatile com­pounds called phe­nols found in wood smoke.

Any sig­nif­i­cant expo­sure dur­ing the life-cycle of the crop results in a con­di­tion called smoke taint. Smoke tainted fruits take on a char­ac­ter­is­tic burnt, ashy or med­i­c­i­nal fla­vor that can show up in wines or oils pressed from the exposed har­vest, accord­ing to the Australian Wine Research Institute.

During inclement weather, wind can carry these dam­ag­ing phe­nols hun­dreds of miles from an active fire, threat­en­ing crops across a much wider and more exposed area.

Many California olive grow­ers sim­ply har­vested their olive crop before nearby fires threat­ened their liveli­hood with smoke dam­age. In a recent sur­vey admin­is­tered by Olive Oil Times, only two pro­duc­ers from the United States said that wild­fires had impacted their pro­duc­tion.

“We had a very strong har­vest this sea­son. We have pro­duced some of the high­est qual­ity extra vir­gin olive oil in our 20-year his­tory,” Michael Fox, the CEO of California Olive Ranch, told Olive Oil Times. ​“Neither we nor our grower part­ners in the state have had any of our orchards affected by the fires last fall.”

• CBS News


• The Australian Wine Research Institute