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New South Wales (NSW) and other parts of Aus­trali­a’s east­ern seaboard con­tinue to be rav­aged by a drought that shows no signs of let­ting up.

While the pro­longed dry spell has wreaked havoc on ranch­ers and grain farm­ers, some of the state’s small olive grow­ers and oil pro­duc­ers are wary that their crops and prof­its may be dam­aged as well.

Accord­ing to the Aus­tralian Bureau of Mete­o­rol­ogy, NSW has expe­ri­enced its dri­est win­ter since 2002 and dri­est year since 1965.

Hot and dry con­di­tions led to lower olive oil yields in the state dur­ing the pre­vi­ous har­vest sea­son. About 20 per­cent of Australia’s olive grow­ers are located in NSW. Another 40 per­cent are located in Queens­land, Vic­to­ria and Tas­ma­nia, all of which have suf­fered from the drought.

“The pro­longed hot, dry con­di­tions at flow­er­ing in 2017, and par­tic­u­larly dur­ing the ripen­ing period in 2018, con­tributed sig­nif­i­cantly to low yields for the 2018 sea­son,” Greg Sey­mour, the CEO of the Aus­tralian Olive Asso­ci­a­tion, told Olive Oil Times.

How­ever, the state’s olive trees will not flower until Octo­ber. Whether or not there is rain between now and then will com­pletely change olive grow­ers’ for­tunes.

“It is too early to tell [if the com­ing year’s oil yield or qual­ity will be affected by the drought],” Sey­mour said. ​“An assess­ment post flow­er­ing will give us a much clearer indi­ca­tion of what we can expect.”

The Aus­tralian Olive Asso­ci­a­tion will head out for a series of field days in Novem­ber, which will give them a good idea of how this har­vest season’s olive yield will look.

“While things look grim right now, one good rain event could make an enor­mous dif­fer­ence to the 2019 crop,” Sey­mour added.

The lat­est fore­casts from the Bureau of Mete­o­rol­ogy pre­dict that the drought will con­tinue well into the sum­mer. Andrew Watkins, one of the Bureau’s mete­o­rol­o­gists, warned farm­ers to brace for a hot­ter and drier spring than usual. He also said that drought con­di­tions are fore­casted to inten­sify across the coun­try.

“[We are] look­ing at aver­age to below-aver­age rain­fall, unfor­tu­nately, for the drought areas and warmer-than-aver­age con­di­tions through those areas as well,” Watkins told reporters at a recent press con­fer­ence.

He expects that NSW will be one of the states most affected by the drought, which may be com­pounded dur­ing the sum­mer months if El Niño forms. Accord­ing to mete­o­rol­o­gists, there is about a 50 per­cent chance that will hap­pen.

“This will basi­cally mean that as we get into sum­mer, there’d be less chance of hav­ing those recov­ery rains that we need,” Watkins said. ​“We might have to wait until as late as autumn in 2019 to start see­ing some recov­ery rains in the drought areas.”

How­ever, NSW did receive some rain in August, which came as a pleas­ant reprieve for local olive grow­ers.

“Hope­fully it’s enough to carry us through,” Jayne Ben­tivoglio, the CEO of Ryl­stone Olive Press, told Olive Oil Times. ​“We are strug­gling with water every­where. We are cur­rently in drought water­ing mode, so we’re buy­ing water and bring­ing it in from else­where.”

Ben­tivoglio grows 8,000 olive trees at a farm located 3.5 hours north­west of Syd­ney. She only irri­gates about half of her trees due to how expen­sive buy­ing water is. Ben­tivoglio said the drought is more likely to impact the quan­tity of olives she will have to har­vest next autumn, not the qual­ity of the result­ing oil.

“I may not always get a crop, but when I do the qual­ity is always of an award-win­ning stan­dard,” she said.

To deter­mine whether or not the qual­ity of the oil will be affected, Ben­tivoglio will need to wait until Feb­ru­ary. This is when the flesh under­neath the skin of the olives devel­ops. If Feb­ru­ary is very dry then the flesh growth will be inad­e­quate and the result­ing oil will be of lower qual­ity.

While there are not yet any reports cir­cu­lat­ing about the effects of the drought on Aus­tralian olive groves, how badly olive farm­ers will be impacted largely depends on how they irri­gate their trees.

“I would expect that those groves rely­ing on local sur­face catch­ment for irri­ga­tion water will be affected as they are unlikely to have full dams at the start of the grow­ing sea­son unless some sig­nif­i­cant rain events take place in the near future,” Lean­dro Ravetti, the tech­ni­cal direc­tor of Mod­ern Olives, told Olive Oil Times.

“Those grow­ers rely­ing on bore water or water from larger irri­ga­tion sys­tems, such as the Mur­ray-Dar­ling basin, will not be affected by the drought as the water sup­ply is quite cer­tain,” he added.

The Mur­ray-Dar­ling basin stretches through­out NSW and Vic­to­ria and is also par­tially located in South Aus­tralia and Queens­land.

While some small olive grow­ers in Vic­to­ria and South Aus­tralia told Olive Oil Times that they do not expect to expe­ri­ence much of an impact from the drought, oth­ers are con­cerned that their pro­duc­tion costs will increase sharply with water prices.

Unlike other olive pro­duc­ing coun­tries where the gov­ern­ment has stepped in to pro­vide assis­tance dur­ing times of drought, the Aus­tralian gov­ern­ment has not. It has instead focussed its atten­tion and resources on ranch­ers.

“It’s pretty hard to get money out of the gov­ern­ment, espe­cially for small grow­ers,” Ben­tivoglio said. ​“There’s no gov­ern­ment help for olive grow­ers.”

In spite of the impacts of the drought, Sey­mour believes there will not be a drop-off in pro­duc­tiv­ity for the over­all Aus­tralian olive oil sec­tor. The coun­try is enter­ing an on-year and large olive oil pro­duc­ers in west­ern Aus­tralia have largely escaped the effects of the drought.

“If BBO and west­ern Aus­tralia have a good year in 2019, which is look­ing like a good pos­si­bil­ity, then the impact on the Aus­tralian olive oil sec­tor in terms of vol­ume will not be all that sig­nif­i­cant,” Sey­mour added, refer­ring to Bound­ary Bend Olives, the largest olive oil pro­ducer in Aus­tralia.

How­ever, small pro­duc­ers in the east — espe­cially in NSW — will be the ones feel­ing the brunt of the drought, both in the groves and on their bot­tom lines.

“The impact will be felt by indi­vid­ual small pro­duc­ers rather than the indus­try,” Sey­mour said.

• The Aus­tralian