TULARE, Calif. — Extra olives with your martini? Bartenders soon may think twice about that, with table-olive prices expected to go up as California growers face their second- lightest harvest in more than a decade.
State and federal agriculture officials have predicted that the table-olive crop is down by half this year because of harsh spring weather. And that’s only half the bad news: Farmers say sparse fruit means it’s not practical to pick the fruit from many trees, reducing supply and driving up prices.
“Mother Nature has not been kind to us,” said Adin Hester, president of the Olive Growers Council. “It’s not a pretty scene.”
Since 2000, the harvests on California’s 26,000 acres of table-olive trees, mainly the manzanillo and sevillano varieties, have been increasingly inconsistent. That has prompted growers to sell off their trees to landscapers and plant citrus or pomegranates in their place.
Last year’s boom harvest of 132,000 tons followed a record- low 23,000-ton harvest in 2006.
“I can count on one hand the number of people here with any kind of crop this year,” said Rod Burkett, who farms 30 acres of olive trees and oversees 2,700 more in Tulare County, where more than half of California’s crop originates.
Hester blames late rain for 2006’s record-low crop, and a heat wave in April followed by high winds dried up pollen for this year’s crop.
