Olive oil market booming
CHICO, Calif. — Jamie Johansson can be found every Saturday at the Chico Farmers' Market, hawking bottles of his Lodestar Farms olive oil by offering dipped bread.
With each bottle, Johansson, like his fellow California olive oil producers, is squeezing into a crowded market as health-conscious and food-savvy Americans are increasingly turning to olive oil.
U.S. sales have doubled over the past decade, now accounting for a third of all cooking oils used at home. California, the leading U.S. producer, is the new kid on a very old block and accounts for less than 1 percent of a world market dominated by Mediterranean countries that have produced the oil for millennia.
With a well-suited climate in California, acreage is increasingly being devoted to growing olives specifically for oil. About 4,000 acres of oil-specific orchards are being added in the state each year.
California producers, many of them independent sellers like Johansson, are targeting the gourmet foods market with small batches of high quality oil.
"Food trends in the country have always started in California," said Johansson, who sells his product for $12 to $18 a bottle at farmers' markets, independent grocery stores, a tasting room on his farm and through a Web site. He said it's not like the bland, blond mass-produced oils found in many grocery stores.
Until recently, olive oil offered a way for growers to salvage fruit that didn't make it as table olives.
But updated technology borrowed from the wine industry has cut farmers' harvesting costs. Machines now shake the olives onto a net, allowing farmers to harvest their crop for about $40 per ton, compared to $350 per hand-picked ton.
While hand-picking is still favored by smaller and organic operations, the mechanized harvesting doesn't diminish the oil's quality, said Paul Vossen, who studies olive oil through the University of California Cooperative Extension office in Sonoma County.
From a half-dozen 20 years ago, the state's oil industry has grown to include more than 500 producers, most of them operating on less than 30 acres.
Being relatively new to the olive oil-making process means U.S. producers aren't bogged down by traditional methods and allows them to be open to new technologies, Vossen said.
Nearly all California growers produce extra virgin oil — the top category, which is made from the first pressing of freshly picked olives, Vossen said. Lower grades — such as "extra light" — are made from olives that are older, bruised or have fallen on the ground.
The Food and Drug Administration doesn't enforce the labeling categories, and the last time the United States set olive oil standards was 1942. Back then the terms "fancy" and "extra fancy" were used to describe the oil, Johansson said.
The California industry's trade group, the California Olive Oil Council, has petitioned the U.S. Department of Agriculture to adopt the international grades and has developed its own criteria to put its stamp of approval on olive oil.
But the council's certification panel recently failed a taste test before international judges.
The seal of the international group doesn't mean much to American producers, whose main marketing points have been local appeal, Vossen said.
"In California, the quality is excellent but the quantity is low," he said.
Today, there is a greater awareness of food and a move toward cooking more international and gourmet dishes, which often lend themselves to olive oil, Vossen said.
"People are realizing they don't have to necessarily treat olive oil as a fat, but as a spice," Vossen said, "as something that will change the flavor of your food."
