Olive Groves in Texas Remain Barren Ahead of Harvest Season

There will be no olive har­vest for the third con­sec­u­tive year in Texas, his­tor­i­cally the sec­ond-largest olive oil-pro­duc­ing state in the United States.

“The groves remain in a restora­tion sta­tus,” said Cathy Burnell, pres­i­dent of the Texas Association of Olive Oil (TXAOO) and Texas Olive Oil Advisory Board board mem­ber, told Olive Oil Times. ​“The good news and pos­i­tive signs are that we are see­ing recov­ery in exist­ing groves, and plant­ing new groves has resumed.”

“The Texas olive har­vest [usu­ally] begins in late August and goes through early October, but Texas will not have an olive har­vest in 2023,” she added. ​“But we are excited and look for­ward to the 2024 Texas olives.”

“Long story short, there will be no olive har­vest in Texas this year,” con­firmed Stephen Janak, an exten­sion pro­gram spe­cial­ist at Texas A&M AgriLife. ​“Fall of 2020 was the last time olives were har­vested in Texas.”

Depending on their loca­tion in the state, the sec­ond-largest in the U.S. by area, olive grow­ers in Texas expe­ri­enced diverse impacts and have reacted dif­fer­ently.

“While a hand­ful of peo­ple quit grow­ing olives entirely, some switched to dif­fer­ent crops,” Janak, who vis­its orchards across Texas, told Olive Oil Times. However, he noted, ​“the major­ity have replanted or are at least con­tin­u­ing to care for their trees and try­ing to revi­tal­ize their orchards.”

Texas has expe­ri­enced his­toric and dam­ag­ing freez­ing weather in three straight win­ters.

“Nearly all the orchards north of U.S. Highway 90 [which con­nects Houston with San Antonio and con­tin­ues into west Texas] look ter­ri­ble,” Janak said. ​“Most have small, stunted, dam­aged trees, or the orchards have been recently replanted this spring.”

“[In con­trast] south of U.S. Highway 90 looks bet­ter,” he added. ​“There are orchards here that never com­pletely froze to the ground and only had some canopy dieback.”

At the begin­ning of the year, Janak said there was hope for an olive har­vest in Texas, but extreme win­ter weather con­di­tions again inter­fered.

“We fully expected a crop this year,” he said. ​“It looked like we were on the verge of our come­back year, at least for the more south­ern orchards. [However,] we had unsea­son­ably warm weather imme­di­ately before freez­ing tem­per­a­tures this win­ter.”

The warm win­ter tem­per­a­tures resulted in the olive trees pro­duc­ing buds pre­ma­turely, which were then dam­aged by the drop to below-freez­ing tem­per­a­tures shortly after.

“Inflorescence buds had begun to wake up and were caught by the freeze,” Janak said. ​“I cut open many buds in February to find that they were black and dead inside.”

“The long and short story, all the orchards with mature, estab­lished trees that were capa­ble of set­ting a crop look really good right now – but they have no fruit,” he added. ​“The trees are big and healthy and vig­or­ous, with no fruit load. The chal­lenge now is to keep free­load­ing trees from get­ting too vig­or­ous.”

Burnell con­firmed that the recent warm weather fol­lowed by an imme­di­ate cold snap had dealt a blow to grow­ers across the Lone Star State.

“Previously weak­ened olive trees were killed, and newly planted young olive trees were dam­aged,” she said. ​“The win­ter cold from this year was expe­ri­enced in areas of Texas that tra­di­tion­ally don’t see tem­per­a­tures in the twen­ties or teens (about –10 ºC to – 4 ºC).”

“The groves that escaped sig­nif­i­cant dam­age from the win­ter storm, Uri, suf­fered dam­age from this unex­pected cold,” Burnell added.

According to a report from the Texas Comptroller, the Winter Storm Uri of 2021 will remain etched into Texans’ minds for a long time. The storm caused sig­nif­i­cant snow accu­mu­la­tion and power black­outs across the state. The esti­mated storm-related losses range between $80 bil­lion to $130 bil­lion.

A Texas Farm Bureau report esti­mates agri­cul­tural losses from Winter Storm Uri at over $600 mil­lion. The report notes that these esti­mates are con­ser­v­a­tive and cumu­la­tive losses may be much higher, with reper­cus­sions that can affect pro­duc­ers for years.

Looking ahead, pro­duc­ers and grow­ers in the Lone Star State are opti­mistic and focused on grow­ing new skills. Olives are an emerg­ing indus­try in Texas, and Texas grow­ers are enthu­si­as­tic about tak­ing fresh approaches to emerge vic­to­ri­ous.

“We do have hope for a har­vest in 2024,” Janak said. ​“The orchards in the state’s south­ern half are healthy, with lots of poten­tial fruit­ing wood. What we need for that to hap­pen is at least some sem­blance of a nor­mal win­ter. We would like to request no extreme tem­per­a­ture swings and tem­per­a­tures lower than about 27 ºF ( – 3 ºC).”

“If we do receive enough chill­ing to cause flow­er­ing, and we also avoid more freeze dam­age, the Texas olive indus­try would see its first olive har­vest in four years,” he added. ​“That would do a lot to pro­vide a bit of opti­mism and hope for Texas olive grow­ers.”

Despite the set­backs of the past three years, Burnell said olive grow­ers in Texas have learned a lot.

While there were no har­vests in the con­ven­tional sense, Burnell takes a broader per­spec­tive of the term and says pro­duc­ers had reaped the ben­e­fits of a very dif­fer­ent kind of har­vest­ing.

“Harvest means to col­lect or obtain (a resource) for future use,” Burnell explained. ​“Texas has pro­duced con­ven­tional olive har­vests since 2012, and with each har­vest, Texas grow­ers have become more skilled in both what and what not to do to achieve a suc­cess­ful Texas olive har­vest.”

“With Mother Nature as the apex teacher school­ing us with his­toric weather events over the past three years, Texas olive grow­ers have ​‘har­vested’ inno­va­tion, per­se­ver­ance and deter­mi­na­tion along with olive vari­ety ver­i­fi­ca­tion, grove estab­lish­ment method­olo­gies and man­age­ment,” she added. ​“These are the resources that will take Texas olive grow­ers and the Texas olive indus­try into the future.”

• Texas Comptroller
• Texas Farm Bureau