Faced with Aging Workforce, Olive Center Educates Next Generation of Ag. Pros

Among the chal­lenges fac­ing California’s agri­cul­tural sec­tor is its rapidly aging work­force.

According to the United States Department of Agriculture’s 2017 cen­sus, its most recent, the aver­age age of farm­ers in California rose to 59. Overall, one-third of American farm­ers are over the age of 65.

The Olive Center at the University of California-Davis is work­ing to change this trend with its recently launched Olea Learn pro­gram.

The pro­fes­sional train­ing pro­gram com­bines diverse expe­ri­ences for stu­dents to learn about grow­ing olives and pro­duc­ing and mar­ket­ing olive oil.

“For stu­dents, it’s a great oppor­tu­nity,” Javier Fernandez-Salvador, the UC Davis Olive Center’s exec­u­tive direc­tor, told Olive Oil Times. ​“The only way you get an expe­ri­ence like this is when you’re work­ing in the indus­try. And for the indus­try, they get a con­tin­u­ous source of trained per­son­nel at the best agri­cul­tural school in the world.”

“We chose the name Olea Learn because stu­dents will learn every­thing about olives,” he added. Olea is the Latin word for olive or olive tree.

The pilot pro­gram started in 2022 with one stu­dent and has grown to five appren­tices.

Fernandez-Salvador envi­sions the pro­gram, sup­ported by a com­bi­na­tion of olive oil pro­duc­ers and agri­cul­tural equip­ment man­u­fac­tur­ers, can pro­vide train­ing for four to five appren­tices each year over the next five years.

He said the pro­gram offers oppor­tu­ni­ties for under­grad­u­ate stu­dents to receive hands-on train­ing in olive research, farm man­age­ment, data col­lec­tion and pro­cess­ing, prod­uct man­age­ment and mar­ket­ing with indus­try mem­bers.

Apprentices also gain famil­iar­ity with a wide range of agro­nomic and busi­ness sub­jects, includ­ing field man­age­ment, irri­ga­tion prac­tices, pest con­trol, research and finances of orchard man­age­ment.

Practical work on olive trees occurs at Wolfskill Experimental Orchards in Winters, which includes a research orchard con­sid­ered a trea­sure of cen­ten­nial her­itage trees.

Fernandez-Salvador explained that Wolfskill’s two olive orchards are where stu­dents con­duct exper­i­ments, prun­ing, cal­cu­lat­ing proper fer­til­iza­tion, irri­ga­tion and yield for olive trees.

One olive orchard is ded­i­cated to a super high-den­sity sys­tem and is open for exper­i­ments and tri­als. The sec­ond orchard is planted with medium den­sity, with older trees that have not been man­aged for sev­eral years, pro­vid­ing an ideal site for the recov­ery project.

“The recov­ery project is of spe­cial inter­est to the olive oil and table olive indus­try,” Fernandez-Salvador said.

“Students share valu­able advice with local pro­duc­ers as they develop solu­tions to address issues related to irri­ga­tion or soil man­age­ment,” he added.

Participants shared their impres­sions of the pro­gram in a press release pub­lished on the Olive Center’s web­site.

“The biggest thing that attracted me was the chance to learn what goes on in the indus­try, not just tak­ing care of the plant, but the logis­tics of financ­ing an orchard and sell­ing prod­ucts,” said Irvin Chao, a senior major­ing in bio­log­i­cal sys­tems engi­neer­ing.

“Working here gives you the per­spec­tive of the small-scale farm­ing indus­try,” he added. ​“We get to see what it means to lead an agri­cul­tural busi­ness.”

Raeva Johnson, a sus­tain­able agri­cul­ture and food sys­tems major, said her favorite part of the pro­gram was con­duct­ing yield analy­sis based on how many pounds of olives were har­vested.

In addi­tion to hands-on learn­ing in the orchards, the Olea Learn pro­gram offers oppor­tu­ni­ties for stu­dents to net­work with indus­try pro­fes­sion­als at events, speak­ing engage­ments and work­shops.

Sensory train­ing and learn­ing how to pro­fes­sion­ally taste and eval­u­ate extra vir­gin olive oil and craft­ing, design­ing and mar­ket­ing oils are part of the core cur­ricu­lum.

Along with har­vest­ing the olives and pro­duc­ing the olive oil, stu­dents design the bot­tles and mar­ket the prod­ucts in down­town Davis and the uni­ver­sity book­store.

Fernandez-Salvador said he is filled with pride when he sees the stu­dents take own­er­ship of the prod­ucts they helped cre­ate.

“Olea Learn is a win-win for both stu­dents look­ing to gain impor­tant exper­tise and for statewide agri­cul­tural com­pa­nies look­ing to hire skilled work­ers,” Fernandez-Salvador said

“The Olea Learn pro­gram pro­vides a steady flow of well-trained agri­cul­tural per­son­nel such as agron­o­mists and olive spe­cial­ists to the labor force,” he con­cluded. ​“With this appren­tice­ship, we can pro­vide trained per­son­nel to respond to grow­ing labor needs.”

• UC Davis Olive Center