Drought, Not Fire, Remains the Bane of Australian Olive Growers

As wild­fires con­tinue to burn across large por­tions of south­east­ern Australia, olive grow­ers are report­ing that their groves have largely been left undam­aged.

“The only phys­i­cal dam­age to a grove occurred in South Australia and that was­n’t badly burned,” Greg Seymour, the CEO of the Australian Olive Association (AOA), told Olive Oil Times. ​“They are the only ones who we’ve had reports of being directly burned by the fire.”

However, Seymour cau­tioned that this remains an incom­plete pic­ture. He has not heard back from every grower in the affected areas and pointed out that fires are con­tin­u­ing to burn across the coun­try.

At the time of writ­ing and based on the infor­ma­tion cur­rently avail­able, it appears unlikely that Australia’s 2020 har­vest will be directly impacted by the fires. Instead, Seymour argues that one of the symp­toms of these fires – the long and per­sis­tent drought – and some unfore­seen reper­cus­sions of the fire are more likely to impact the upcom­ing har­vest.

“What we’ve seen is a mas­sive exo­dus of insects and other ani­mals from the impacted areas,” Seymour said. ​“They are head­ing some­where that is green and safe. We’ve seen olive groves with quite high lev­els of pests, such as lacewing, that nor­mally would­n’t occur at these types of lev­els and we’re yet to see the reper­cus­sions of this type of migra­tion on the olive groves.”

Seymour also warned that peak fire sea­son is about to begin in Australia, mean­ing active wild­fires may become larger and new wild­fires will inevitably start.

“We’re mov­ing right into peak fire sea­son now and there’s no rain pre­dicted until March, so this isn’t all over,” he said. ​“It will come up again as soon as the weather changes. The fires don’t just go out.”

And even when the fires do go out, the harm they cause to agri­cul­ture goes far beyond the imme­di­ate dam­age of smoke and burn­ing plants.

“Wildfires have many points of impact on hor­ti­cul­tural busi­nesses,” Steve Milton, an olive grower and the pres­i­dent of the Western Australian Olive Council, told Olive Oil Times. ​“Topsoil, com­post and mulches are impacted seri­ously through the loss of microor­gan­isms and the micro­bi­otics essen­tial for build­ing a soil ecol­ogy that can sus­tain plants. This takes a long time to build or rebuild and can be very expen­sive.”

Milton also pointed out that fight­ing wild­fires requires vast amounts of water that usu­ally comes from rivers and local dams at the expense of agri­cul­ture.

“In my instance, water loss from my dams through it being used in fight­ing last year’s fires, fol­lowed by a very dry win­ter has resulted in my dams being seri­ously depleted to the point that I can’t afford to irri­gate my grove this year,” he said. ​“My trees are stressed and I find a lot of fruit on the ground.”

“Will these things have an impact on the com­ing har­vest?,” Milton asked. ​“Most likely for me.”

Australia’s unprece­dent­edly large and early wild­fires are a symp­tom of a much larger prob­lem that is hav­ing a far greater impact on olive grow­ers and agri­cul­tur­al­ists of all types across Australia: not enough rain­fall.

“There has been no rain. That’s the prob­lem,” Seymour said. ​“For loads of peo­ple, they just haven’t had rain or any mean­ing­ful mois­ture for two sea­sons.”

According to Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology (BOM), 2019 was both the hottest and dri­est year on record. Based on research that the BOM has done, this appears to be unlikely to change in the near future.

Australia is cur­rently in a very strong pos­i­tive Indian Ocean dipole, where cooler ocean tem­per­a­tures off the coast of the con­ti­nent and hot­ter tem­per­a­tures off the coast of Africa lead to winds blow­ing from east to west. These winds take the mois­ture away from the Australian coast and deposit more rain on South Asia and East Africa.

The cur­rent state of the Indian Ocean dipole means the chances of dra­matic improve­ment to the amount of sea­sonal rain­fall in Australia is very low.

A neg­a­tive Indian Ocean dipole causes the oppo­site phe­nom­e­non, in which Australia would receive more rain­fall. However, neg­a­tive Indian Ocean dipoles are con­sid­er­ably rarer than pos­i­tive ones, with only two major ones occur­ring since 1992.

Instead, the major con­trib­u­tor of rain­fall in Australia is the phe­nom­e­non known as La Niña, which takes place in the Pacific Ocean. During La Niña events, cooler water tem­per­a­tures along the equa­tor cause the wind to blow west and deposit rain­fall in Australia. Over the past decade, there have been three La Niña events with the last one com­ing in 2017 – 18.

In spite of these cli­matic chal­lenges, Seymour said that olive grow­ers in Australia are learn­ing to adapt. A com­bi­na­tion of chang­ing agro­nom­i­cal prac­tices, effec­tive gov­ern­ment lob­by­ing and good mar­ket­ing prac­tices will help ensure a sus­tain­able future for the coun­try’s olive sec­tor.

“At our 2018 con­fer­ence, we had pre­sen­ta­tions on some good research done on irri­ga­tion tim­ing, vol­umes, salin­ity impacts and renew­ing the struc­ture of the trees,” Seymour said.

He cited an exam­ple of grow­ers using years in which they have poor yields to prune trees and improve the over­all health of their groves. Taking the time to do this in unpro­duc­tive years helps boost the trees’ pro­duc­tiv­ity in sea­sons with more rain.

“People are uti­liz­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties to do things they might not always do,” Seymour said.

In Western Australia, where ground­wa­ter sources are rapidly dry­ing up, pro­duc­ers are also inves­ti­gat­ing the most effec­tive times to irri­gate to keep trees and soil healthy.

“We are look­ing closely at what olive trees really need in cer­tain soils and ecosys­tems so that we can rec­om­mend water economies that don’t reduce pro­duc­tiv­ity,” Milton, from the Western Australian Olive Council, said.

The over­ar­ch­ing idea is to be able to max­i­mize olive yields while min­i­miz­ing water inputs and there­fore pro­duc­tion costs. As the water dries up across the con­ti­nent, the price of irri­ga­tion is quickly ris­ing.

“The cost of water is going up expo­nen­tially because there’s a short­age and the high­est-earn­ing crops can pay the most for it,” Seymour said. ​“That makes it dif­fi­cult for peo­ple to get the water and, when they can get it, make grow­ing olives prof­itable.”

One of the remits of the AOA is lob­by­ing both fed­eral and state gov­ern­ments in Australia to make sure that water mar­kets are more trans­par­ent and farm­ers can get fair prices.

Seymour and the AOA are cur­rently await­ing the results of an audit by the Australian Securities and Investments Commission on the han­dling of water mar­kets. Seymour said he expects to get the results in March or April next year.

“Hopefully the water mar­kets will allow grow­ers to get greater access and more fair pric­ing of water,” he said.

In terms of mar­ket­ing, Seymour believes it is impor­tant to con­tinue tout­ing the qual­ity of Australian olive oils through con­sumer edu­ca­tion and out­reach. He said that it is cru­cial to empha­size that Australia’s high-qual­ity olive oils cost more than infe­rior-qual­ity oils, but are well worth the price dif­fer­ence.

“A very big chunk of the indus­try has good irri­ga­tion water and quite frankly when it’s hot and dry and you’ve got plenty of water, it’s great for grow­ing olives because there is less pest dis­ease and max­i­mum pho­to­syn­the­sis,” Seymour said. ​“Times are tough, but the redeem­ing fac­tor is that we get really high-qual­ity oils. That’s the only kind of com­fort we can get out of this sit­u­a­tion.”

• Australian Olive Association