Olive Center to Host Inaugural Olive Oil Sustainability Conference

An esti­mated 250 sci­en­tists and olive oil pro­fes­sion­als will attend the inau­gural International Olive Sustainability Conference at the Robert Mondavi Institute for Wine and Food Science in Davis, California, from September 5^th to 7^th.

The University of California-Davis Olive Center is host­ing the con­fer­ence, which will fea­ture research pre­sen­ta­tions, panel dis­cus­sions, ques­tion and answer ses­sions and case stud­ies on a wide range of top­ics rel­e­vant to olive farm­ing, milling and mar­ket­ing.

“On the agri­cul­tural side, we’ll be dis­cussing top­ics like water use, cli­mate change and car­bon seques­tra­tion,” said Javier Fernandez-Salvador, the Olive Center’s exec­u­tive direc­tor. ​“We’ll also cover fer­til­izer opti­miza­tion, pes­ti­cide reduc­tion, habi­tat con­ser­va­tion, hedgerow man­age­ment, soil health and regen­er­a­tive agri­cul­ture.”

“We also want to exam­ine what’s hap­pen­ing on the milling side – specif­i­cally [how pomace] is dried and used as com­post or processed fur­ther to extract ben­e­fi­cial com­pounds,” he added.

The con­fer­ence will con­clude with a tast­ing ses­sion and cook­ing demon­stra­tion at the Culinary Institute of America’s Napa cam­pus. ​“It wouldn’t be a good con­fer­ence if we don’t include the food side of it,” Fernandez-Salvador said.

The orga­niz­ers envi­sion the con­fer­ence as a forum to present the lat­est sus­tain­abil­ity research and demon­strate prac­ti­cal ways for farm­ers and millers to improve sus­tain­abil­ity. They also hope to use the event to cap­ture media and con­sumer atten­tion about olive oil’s sus­tain­abil­ity cre­den­tials.

To that end, the morn­ing of the third day will be ded­i­cated to case stud­ies, includ­ing how sus­tain­abil­ity can add value to prod­ucts in the mar­ket.

“We have so many peo­ple that are com­ing to learn how to mar­ket their prod­ucts bet­ter because some­times they don’t know how to trans­late that mes­sage from the grower,” Fernandez-Salvador said. ​“How do they make that mes­sage of the grower’s sus­tain­abil­ity prac­tices clear to the con­sumer.”

Case stud­ies will also cover spe­cific ways to imple­ment sus­tain­able prac­tices in tra­di­tion­ally and inten­sively planted olive groves and pre­serve cen­te­nar­ian and mil­lenary olive trees.

“Half of the pre­sen­ters are sci­en­tists, and half are farm­ers, pro­duc­ers and peo­ple involved in the trade, so there’s a lit­tle bit of every­thing,” Fernandez-Salvador said. ​“We did­n’t want it to be a con­fer­ence that focused exclu­sively on farm­ing, exclu­sively on irri­ga­tion or exclu­sively on milling. It has to include every aspect and touch on all sides of sus­tain­abil­ity.”

While California-based farm­ers, millers and researchers will be a sig­nif­i­cant pres­ence, Fernandez-Salvador said the Olive Center had part­nered with the University of Évora in Portugal, the University of Jaén in Spain and the International Olive Council to bring experts from around the olive oil world to share their per­spec­tives.

Along with pre­sen­ters, he added that atten­dees would be attend­ing from around the world as well, includ­ing long-estab­lished olive-grow­ing coun­tries in Europe, the Middle East, Oceania and North and South America, along with new fron­tiers of olive pro­duc­tion, includ­ing Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Fernandez-Salvador believes this will be the first of many sus­tain­abil­ity con­fer­ences. ​“We hope that other uni­ver­si­ties will take on the chal­lenge and con­tinue to do inter­na­tional sus­tain­abil­ity con­fer­ences in the future,” he said. ​“There’s inter­est from other uni­ver­si­ties that are part­ners now to con­tinue this in the future.”

Registration for the International Olive Sustainability Conference closes on August 18^th.