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Restaurant Daily News 6 7 Tuesday, May 22, 2018 California Olive Ranch Invests in Sustainability By Lorrie Baumann A $35 million investment by a U.S.-based institutional investor and the company's existing investors will allow California Olive Ranch to increase its production capacity while also adding an organic product and reducing the company's car- bon footprint. "This investment will accelerate the future of the American olive oil move- ment, innovate our sustainable harvesting methods and revolutionize our production technology," said California Olive Ranch President Gregg Kelley. "It indicates the great faith that the investment community has in what we're doing and the future of California olive oil." With this new investment, California Olive Ranch will be expanding its pro- duction, both by planting more trees on its own property and by entering into long- term partnerships with other growers who will plant more olive trees on their land. The plan goes well beyond just planting more trees and pumping out more oil, though – it's also about new ideas for practices that can add to the sustainability of California agriculture. Managing Water Scarcity California Olive Ranch's plan to increase production in California comes in the context of California's Sustainable Groundwater Management Act, a set of laws enacted and signed by Governor Gerry Brown in 2015 that, for the first time in the state's history, established a framework for sustainable local ground- water management that prohibits ground- water-dependent basins from a practice known as water mining, the extraction of more water than can be replaced through natural processes. Under the law, California's major groundwater basins will be regulated to bring them into a bal- ance of pumping and recharge. Kelley predicts that the new law will have a dra- matic impact on California's agriculture. "Water is going to be an ever more pre- cious resource," he said. "Water is going to be the major economic factor in pro- duction agriculture in California over the next 10 to 20 years. It will affect what crops will be planted where." Olives are an ideal crop, according to Kelley, for a regulatory environment that the California Department of Water Resources says is designed to make water conservation a way of life in California. Olives are low-input, not just in terms of the water they require, but also in terms of their vulnerability to insect pests and weeds, which means that growers don't have to spray them with a lot of chemicals or give them a lot of water to persuade them to yield an economic crop. "We can plant the trees on soils that aren't optimal for other crops and still have a good pro- duction level," Kelley said. "Even con- ventional orchards are as close to organic as you can get [without actually being certified for organic production]." Growing the Soil Through a partnership with California State University Chico, widely known as Chico State, California Olive Ranch has, for the past year and a half been involved in a project called the Regenerative Agriculture Initiative. This project has involved redirecting the pomace, the olive mass that's left over after the oil is pressed from it, into compost piles instead of using it as cattle feed. "Today the byproduct of the production process is fed to cows. We say that's why California cows are so happy, but it's not a long-term viable solution," Kelley said. That pomace contains, in addition to valuable organic matter, a variety of other nutrients, including potassium. Potassium deficiency causes olive trees to set less fruit and results in smaller fruit. The min- eral is also important to many other phys- iological processes for the trees, and ade- quate levels assist the trees in resisting the effects of drought. Potassium can be pro- vided to the trees with chemical fertilizer, but composting the pomace and returning it to the soil under the trees increases the soils' organic matter, which helps it retain water, as well as merely providing the trees with necessary potassium. This composting process is an important part of the company's plans to cut its carbon footprint through regenerative agriculture practices, Kelley said. "Many of the building blocks for this are already in place with our large-scale composting operation," he said. "We have already converted a portion of the orchards to organic and will continue to do so. We think the regenerative agriculture approach will bring benefits there as well." Educating Both Growers and Consumers California Olive Ranch will be spreading the knowledge that the company is acquiring through this pilot composting project to its grower partners around California and through educational insti- tutions around the country, even as the company responds to increasing demand in the American market for higher quality olive oils. That demand is the result of greater awareness among consumers about the health benefits of high-quality extra virgin olive oils over lower-quality olive oils, Kelley said. "Extra virgin olive oil is an incredibly healthy product," he said. "Many people haven't been exposed to extra virgin olive oil, and the growth in that awareness is probably the primary driver of our growth." "If you look at the shelf, it looks dif- ferent than it did 10 years ago," he added. "Consumers are continuing to buy the higher quality product." Kelley noted that a decade or so ago, extra virgin olive oil accounted for about 52 percent of American olive oil sales. Today, it's about 70 percent, he said. "We're seeing less of the lower quality oil on the shelves, with some of the smaller players finding it eas- ier to get shelf space," he said. "I think those preferences will continue." While the heart of California Olive Ranch's production is in California and is expected to continue that way, the company is working to meet that grow- ing demand for high-quality olive oils through imports from Italy, through its Lucini Italia subsidiary and through its recently announced Lucini brand of oils produced in Argentina. The company is also looking to expand in other South American countries as well as in other regions around the world where high- quality olives can be grown. "You can- not make high-quality olive oil out of bad fruit," Kelley said. "This requires quality control throughout the produc- tion process as well as through the dis- tribution network. Olive oil has four enemies: time, light, heat and oxygen. We have to look after all of those to maintain quality all the way to the con- sumer's palate." Some of the $35 million in new funds will be invested in more automated har- vesting and milling equipment, continu- ing a mechanization process that allows the company to compete in the global olive oil market, particularly as California's minimum wage rises to $15 an hour. "We'll continue to invest in automation methodologies, starting in the field but continuing throughout our sup- ply chain That's part of the commitment to make sure that our employees get good benefits and a living wage," Kelley said. The employees also benefit from a work- place safety record that's well above aver- age for the agriculture industry, and the mechanization contributes to that safety. "Training is linked directly to quality con- trol and is managed by a full-time safety manager," Kelley said. With this new investment, Kelley's feet are firmly planted in California's soils, but his eyes are on the horizon. "Ultimately, my job is to notice that the world is changing for the better," he said, "and that we're part of the leadership team that's leading that change." Marketing Campaign Promotes Imported Cheeses To help familiarize Americans with the vast array of cheeses imported into the United States, the Cheese Importers Association of America (CIAA) has launched an integrated promotions cam- paign to raise awareness of the many wonderful ways to experience imported cheese. 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