California Olive Ranch
California Olive Ranch(opens in new window) (COR) is the largest domestic grower of olives for extra virgin olive oil in the United States. But while we don’t have statistics on this, they might also be one of the growers most dedicated to research for environmental sustainability (including regenerative agriculture) as well. Their environmental focuses include 1) reducing their carbon footprint, 2) improving water efficiency, 3) promoting biodiversity, 4) minimizing waste and 5) supporting their team members and community. Toni Longley, their Agricultural Project Manager, interfaces between researchers and the COR agronomy and operations team. She met with us to share what regenerative practices they research and use and what they have been learning.
California Olive Ranch was started by several people in Spain who were fascinated with the over the row harvesters used for grapes and wondered if it would work with olives. They started by planting the super-high density olive rows that would be needed for this harvesting method on the ranch in Oroville, CA in 1998 and found it successful. Today, they farm 4,000 acres on several ranches in Artois, Corning, Arbuckle, and Oroville and contract with multiple growers in California. Several of their larger growers are certified organic and many of them employ at least some climate-smart practices. About 10% of COR’s own acres are certified organic and all of them employ climate-smart practices.
In the last several years, they have been rolling out a regenerative agriculture program designed to improve the soil biology and carbon sequestration in their orchards. To help track their progress and improve their programs, they have initiated several studies with Chico State, UC Davis, and the USDA Agricultural Research Service. They then share the results with their grower partners to help them embrace similar practices over time.
The Choice to Go Regenerative
Toni says that the choice came from “a desire and commitment to lead in sustainable olive farming as well as consumer interest and demand for environmentally friendly farming practices. We are interested in farming in a way that reduces harmful environmental impact while staying focused on growing the highest quality olives that we can. We are passionate about studying and learning how to reduce our environmental impact while improving our quality and yield. We also want to benefit the communities we live, work, and grow in.”
However, in some respects, the decision to use over the row harvesters may have opened the door to these practices working at all.
Toni explains: “In the medium and low density olive orchards, harvesting takes a lot of manual labor. You have to get people out there with ladders and they have to rake the olives out of the trees. And ladders can be really dangerous. I think in some European countries, ladders have been banned for harvest for worker safety. It’s become a liability issue. With super-high density you can mechanize all aspects of it. You can pick the olives faster, get them to mill faster, increase the quality, and streamline your operations. It goes over the row and has mechanical fingers on the inside that kind of massage the fruit off as it goes down the line and then drops it into buckets. So you’re not harvesting off of the ground.”
That alone opens the door for using more regenerative practices because you can keep the soil covered with grass and cover crops and more easily use sheep to graze them. Toni thinks this approach could be used in almond growing as well. COR already provides that service with their harvesters for some almond growers near Fresno. “Especially in terms of reducing the amount of dust that comes from shaking the trees in conventional almond harvesting, and no longer needing a clean orchard floor for being able to sweep the almonds up, there’s a lot of opportunity to decrease those practices for air quality and soil health purposes.”
Regenerative Practices at California Olive Ranch
Farmers like to joke that cover crops are the gateway drug to regenerative agriculture but they are really the gateway to better soil health. When that becomes the focus, adding other regenerative practices like reduced tillage, the use of compost or mulch, and the integration of livestock grazing are obvious complementary steps. California Olive Ranch uses all of these methods.
Toni: “We cover crop 100% of our organic acreage, so about 650 acres have a multi species cover crop seed drilled each fall. This year and last year we have done a light disc of the acres we cover crop to increase the germination rate. We cover crop every other row across the rest of our acreage, and only disc the rows that we are going to seed cover crop in. We consider the light discing a reduced tillage regimen because we do it right before seed drilling with the intent to increase germination and grow a thicker fuller stand of cover crop and also because we only disc the rows we plant the cover crop in. We spread compost on our Oroville ranch every year at a rate of 5-10 tons depending on the year, and we spread compost and pomace on other select acreage in Artois and Corning, depending on trials and grants. We have used compost teas in the past in Oroville and at our Emerald River Ranch. We also mulch our prunings in place from hedging and topping, so that the mulch lands in the drive row with the intent to increase our soil organic matter and overall soil health.”
Compost
Compost is the practice Toni is most excited about. “I am passionate about compost. I love compost and I love using waste as a resource. Our mill closed-waste stream, I find really exciting and inspiring. And I’m hopeful that it can be done on a larger level in the future. Reducing the waste that goes to landfill is very important. So with our mill, for example, they take the MOO—the materials other than olives (the sticks, the leaves)—and that goes to compost. And then we save the mill waste water. We let that go into a waste water pond which we use throughout the year to water the compost piles. They need water to activate the biological processes. And then the pomace goes out into our pomace ponds. And we can dry that and reapply it onto our land. We can also sell it as animal feed so it’s being used. So now we’re not hauling off waste water, and we’re not hauling off compost materials to landfill. And those closed loops are really important.
“That and seeing the organic matter increases over time from those regular applications, I find that really exciting. People will say “oh, you can’t change organic matter that quickly, soil doesn’t change that quickly.” But we’re finding that it does change! You really can have beneficial effects by mowing your cover crop, and leaving it in place.”
Water Conservation Technologies
California Olive Ranch claims they use less than half the water per acre that other orchard crops require. Some of that is because olive trees grown close together require less water than some other crops. But they also use a variety of advanced water conservation technologies.
Toni: “All our acreage utilizes water conservation technologies such as drip irrigation, automated soil moisture sensors, flow meters, and VFDs [variable frequency drives]. We have been working to switch our diesel irrigation pumps over to electric with the hope that the California grid will continue utilizing more renewable energy and that we will be able to include/add solar panels to those pumps in the future. We also utilize deficit irrigation and work with researchers that are studying the times and amounts that we can decrease our irrigation throughout the growing season to conserve water at the optimal times for our trees. We are also looking at groundwater recharge projects that we can employ to further conserve water.”
Biodiversity Habitat
California Olive Ranch has several programs in place to support biodiversity. They intend to provide habitat for local wildlife, beneficial insects, and increasing plant biodiversity. It might also be possible for beneficial insects to eliminate the need for pesticides on the olive trees.
Toni: “We have a biodiversity conservation and enhancement plan that covers all of our COR farmed acres that includes practices such as hedgerow installation, installing raptor and owl boxes, conserving and replanting riparian habitat, preserving sensitive land within and surrounding our orchards, prescribed grazing on our preserved grasslands, and plans to decrease invasive weed species on our lands. We are also looking into converting unused land surrounding our orchards into conservation cover areas, with native perennial and annual species. We received a pollinator habitat program grant (CDFA Pollinator Habitat Program block grant ) to plant almost 9 miles of native plant species hedgerows that will be completed by April 2025.”
COR actively applies for CDFA Healthy Soils Program (HSP) and State Water Efficiency and Enhancement Program (SWEEP) grants to support their conservation efforts but also funds the projects through their operational funds.
“We planted our first hedgerows last April and the plants were about 4-6 inches tall and now they’re 5-6 feet tall. . . . We have a mix of 24 native species in our hedgerows. We’re contracting with Cornflower Farms out of Elk Grove. They’re a wholesale native plant nursery. We worked with them to design the species list. We have plants blooming all throughout the year. There’s hopefully always pollen and nectar sources for the pollinators and beneficial insects. They’ve been really wonderful to work with.”
COR doesn’t know what the impact of this project will be yet but when CRARS faculty affiliate Betsy Boyd visited recently to assist with a study based on this project, she found many positive indicators that the hedgerows are being found and utilized. A compilation of the insects found has been started.
Benefits from Research Projects
Research projects provide the opportunity to try new practices with less risk and to test potential choices COR is considering against other alternatives. One project that has been influential is a project that was done as a partnership with CRARS and Glenn County RCD along with a CDFA Healthy Soils Demonstration Grant to look at the effects of multispecies cover crops on soil health and yield.
Toni: “We did see benefits of the cover crop on some parameters of soil health. It decreased the bulk density so that was a positive. It shows that our soil is becoming less compact which will also increase our water infiltration. And we were seeing indicators that it was beginning to increase our organic matter which is something we are highly focused on. We have historically compact soils. They’re high clay content and have some hard pan so they can kind of act like concrete. The rain will run off and there’s poor nutrient cycling and all that. All of our orchards are on poor soils for agriculture. They’re marginal soils so they can be slow to respond and have a baseline poor capacity for nutrient cycling and water retention so we’re working on that.” Based on this study, they have chosen to continue cover cropping across all their acreage.
Another exciting project is one with the USDA Agricultural Research Service’s Sustainable Water Systems unit. Toni: “They have ET Towers that measure evapotranspiration on the ground with Eddy Flux Towers. And then they have satellites that fly by every three days also taking measurements of ET, and they are ground-truthing the data they are taking on the ground. In the future they are hoping that will lead to a publicly available precision irrigation tool so any farmer can look up their farm on an Open ET website, look at the satellite map, and see in real time their ET usage so they can match that up with their hours of irrigation and not over-apply or under-apply. They’ll be able to look at their trees and see if they’re stressed . . . at least that’s the goal of that project. We’re also hoping to develop it to the point that farmers will be able to detect leaks on their orchards. That’s such an avoidable waste of water so if we can find a way to see that through satellite imagery and ET data, that could be really helpful.” The Eddy Flux Towers are also measuring carbon sequestration but COR has no results to report on yet.
A third project happening currently is being done with an HSP demo grant in collaboration with UC Davis to study two different kinds of compost COR uses. Toni: “We had bought a lot of Recology compost and a lot of Westside Spreading compost. And we were curious how they were affecting the soil. So the researcher is going to be studying soil biology and the creation of the organic matter, water infiltration . . . seeing if there is a difference in these two different kinds of compost. And if there isn’t, we’ll go with the cheaper one. But either way, it will be good information to have.
“In the future we are hoping to do more studies on our own on-farm produced compost, as well as more trials with our pomace. Another grant that we had with UC Davis was to study the effects of pomace application in different tonages. So we did 4 tons per acre and 8 tons per acre of wet pomace to look at if it had an herbicide effect. And also to see its effects on soil health. And we did see positive indications that it can work as a natural herbicide and that it can increase leaf nitrogen and begin to feed the soil microorganisms.”
“When it comes to a lot of practices, we just don’t know, so our idea is to do what we can do to find out.”
Challenges
Toni: “Most of the practices that we’ve tried have been working. The compost is really working. The cover crop we also think is working but there have been some challenges with that. Each year we look at the results and modify the cover crop species composition. We use between 9-12 different species. But we have seen some increased pest pressure that seem to be consuming different species in the cover crop. So we’ve removed oats out of the cover crop mix because we found that pests were really enjoying that. This year we have started a trial to look at different cover crop species mixes and we’re going to monitor the insects that are coming there so we can get some idea of the best way forward with that. If we’re accidentally providing a food source to pest species, then we’re going to try to modify that. Part of our Integrated Pest Management strategy is studying what the effects of the cover crops is. There are definitely soil health benefits but if we’re accidentally creating this food source for species we don’t want present then we need to adapt. We’re learning a lot.”
Another challenge came about from cover cropping in their conventional acreage. Toni: We do every other row across our conventional acreages and every row in our organic. But we have seen a challenge with the cover crop doing it every row for conventional in that sometimes we don’t see leaks in the irrigation. We can then have flooding issues and we get our equipment stuck and end up drowning some of our trees. So by doing every other row, going back and forth each year, we are still getting the benefits and we are still leaving weed cover on the other half acres.”
Finally, there have been challenges in integrating sheep to eat the cover crops and supply manure. “We enjoy having the sheep! But there’s not enough sheep in California to service all of the orchards. We have not been able to find enough sheep to cover all of our acreage. We really wish we could! But the sheep are in high demand. We truck them in and have them moved around but we could use many many more thousands of sheep. And sheep are most compatible with the orchards. We think goats would cause too much damage, cows won’t fit in our orchard. Sheep are the best option that we’ve found. Even with sheep, if you leave them in one spot for too long they will start to strip your trees, chew on the bark. They’ll skirt your trees so you have to get them moving through pretty quickly. But they have been doing about 20 acres per day. So 20 acres per 24 hours—not enough days, not enough sheep. I’ve heard that it is hard to be a sheep farmer in this state. In the future I hope that it becomes more economically viable for sheep farmers.”
Has the Investment in Regenerative Practices Been a Financial Success?
Toni: “I think that as the customer interest has grown in sustainable farming practices and farming has been trending towards people demanding more environmentally friendly practices, the company has really tried to listen to that. And they have decided to try to be on the leading edge of that and to really focus on our partnerships with people studying it. We’re trying to learn as much as we can about what works, and what we can do economically to farm within that mindset.
“I can’t speak to how it has affected the profitability of our business, but I do know that when we have people come out for tours, we have our researchers come out to see what we’re doing, and you can see how excited they are. It inspires people. So I see that on my side on the ground. And it feels good to try to farm in a way that reduces harm and to try to be more ecologically minded.
“I think that the state has also been helpful in that they have provided a lot of funding for sustainable practices and helping companies with financial incentives to switch over into more conservation practices. SWEEP has been helpful, HSP funding has been helpful. And then from the federal government, they have a lot of money in the NRCS for the EQIP programs. I think those are all really great avenues for farmers to look into. Getting through those applications and those processes can take time but I have found it to be worth it. There’s a lot of money on the table for farmers right now.”
Regenerative practices also reduce certain costs over time. “The sheep did decrease the cost of mowing because on the blocks where we were able to put sheep, we could decrease or eliminate the need for mowing. In our waste streams, we used to have to pay to haul wastewater, but now we use it beneficially to activate our compost piles. We also spread our compost and pomace, decreasing our need to purchase compost and organic amendments. We have found ways to profit off our closed loop waste streams.”
Advice for Other Farmers
Toni: “I would say to really try to pursue grants and government funding that is available. There’s a lot of nonprofit organizations that offer funding for conservation and sustainability practices. I would also say to try to make connections with researchers to develop projects on your land. Our partnerships with researchers have been very beneficial to us and to the researcher. We both get our needs met. We get to learn and they get to study. They get to research.
“The other part would be to view your waste as an opportunity. For example, we mulch all our prunings in place in the rows where they fall, which has helped to increase our organic matter, which leads to increased water infiltration and retention as well as increased soil fertility. Close those waste stream loops for the benefit of doing less to get rid of waste and doing more for your soil.”
“I’m hopeful that in the future that there will be more funding for riparian restoration on agricultural lands. I think that is a missed opportunity. Water is so important. Water conservation and watershed health is so so important. I wish that we would do as much as we can to focus on the health of our watersheds.”
“I’m hoping this spreads. It’s inspiration that pushes us forward. I love being connected through inspiration and sharing the stories of what we do and what we can do in the face of a lot of challenges. That keeps me going!”