Olive Continued from Page 7 and its aspirations for growth.
have people growing the fruit, and then there’s a co-op mill. So you take your fruit to the mill. The mill makes the oil and sells it out to brand. “Why does that matter?” Clark asked. “Because every time the fruit changes hands, there’s less focus on quality. And at every step, there are markups.” By controlling the process, he said, Cobram follows best practices while keep- ing its retail prices affordable nationwide. American consumers have a growing appetite for extra-virgin olive oil, partly because of its healthy attributes. Demand for California extra-virgin olive oil is out- pacing supply, Clark said. Against a backdrop of low extra-vir- gin olive oil supply growth, part of Cobram’s strategy is to aggressively persuade more independent olive growers to partner with it. Cobram contends that its planting techniques bring the partners greater yields. With California in its third year of drought and a fourth predicted for 2023, Cobram officials say they remain optimistic. Ciriaco Chavez, Cobram’s vice presi- dent of agriculture and industry affairs, noted that olives are an efficient crop for turning a drop of water into value. Amid California’s water challenges, “many growers and farmers are looking to plant olives as an alternative to oth- er crops because of their efficient water use,” Chavez said. “Olives only require 50% of the water that almonds and wal- nuts do.” Cobram’s drip-irrigation system delivers the precise amount, with no drenching. “Olives don’t like to be over-irrigated,” Chavez said. (Edgar Sanchez is a reporter based in Sacramento. He may be contacted at edgar.chez@yahoo.com.)
The company was founded in Australia in 1998 by Rob McGavin and Paul Riordan, who met in an agricultural col- lege there. Olives had never been a big crop down under, so the two Aussies took a gamble. It paid off. The company became a market leader in Australia’s extra-virgin olive oil industry. Eventually, McGavin and Riordan looked to expand. “They were looking for what was next,” Clark said. “And California is per- fectly aligned to grow olives” with its Mediterranean climate. Cobram Estate Woodland began oper- ations in 2015 as a standalone enterprise. Besides the mill, its 7-acre headquar- ters has an olive-testing lab, a bottling room and oil storage tanks—everything needed for extra-virgin olive oil produc- tion. The firm also has a nursery for its mother plants. “At the root of our business, we are farmers,” Clark said. “We own the land, we harvest it, we do the whole process. A lot of other brands you see in super- markets are just brands. They buy in- gredients from farmers somewhere else, they co-pack it and then send it to their marketing arm.” One of Cobram’s employees from Australia, Ebony Lanyon, has shuttled
Ebony Lanyon of Cobram delivers olives for milling. She shuttles between harvests in California and Australia.
between the Woodland farm and anoth- er Cobram olive farm in Boort, Australia, for the past five years. “This will be my 10th harvest” in both hemispheres, she said. Cobram is now marketing itself as a producer and player in California, where olives grown for oil are valued at $41.5 million a year, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. California olive oil production comes from some 45 olive mills and more than 400 farms total- ing over 37,000 acres. The Olive Oil Commission said grower-producers
accounted for 3 million gallons of ol- ive oil in 2021’s high-production year, up from 1.9 million gallons in 2020’s lower-yield cycle, but down from 3.6 million gallons in 2019. This year, production is expected to drop to 1.8 million gallons, with freeze impacting orchards in Colusa and Sutter counties. “Part of that is the alternating produc- tion, but cold weather we had in April also had a significant impact on the crop,” Zanobini said. At Cobram’s harvest celebration, guests were provided with panoramic views of orchards and the harvester, which operates 22 hours a day. They viewed a company video and heard pre- sentations on the firm’s commitment to freshly produced olive oil. Even in the Old World, where olive cul- tivation began thousands of years ago, freshness is often lost, Clark said. “Around the world, primarily in the Mediterranean and Spain, they have different people in each step of the olive oil production,” he said. “They
8 Ag Alert November 9, 2022
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