AGRICULTURE: Region's largest-scale olive grower says business is sweet

By CHRIS BAGLEY - Staff Writer | Thursday, August 14, 2008 10:34 AM PDT ∞

Insects have damaged the remnants of Southern California's olive industry, and fickle weather in the San Joaquin Valley in recent years has made it more difficult for growers to count on steady income.

You could say that Thom and Nancy Curry are squeezing the best out of it.

The Currys, who own boutique olive oil shops in Temecula and San Diego, have been expanding their olive groves at a rate of about a dozen acres a year. With a total of about 100 acres on hillsides to the east, west and north of Temecula, their operation is believed to be the largest south of Riverside.

In effect, the Currys are attempting to re-establish a crop that arrived in the region 120 years ago and began to shrivel around World War II. Fallbrook and surrounding areas had 1,000 acres of commercial olive groves around the turn of the last century, according to "Fallbrook: Yesterday and Today," a 1977 history of the village by Harold Marquis. Agricultural officials now put San Diego County's total commercial acreage at just 37.

Olive trees were initially favored for their ability to thrive in dry, rocky soil. But when the war pulled field workers to the front, olive growers in Fallbrook let their groves go, according to the Marquis' history.

Meanwhile, region's growing supply of diverted water helped avocados and citrus to take over as the area's main cash crops.

But that tide is now going out, he said.

Curry said he's in the process of replanting 20 acres of avocado trees in Fallbrook with olive trees. Some of the avocado groves were destroyed or damaged in last October's wildfires. In other cases, the owners decided to work with Curry after concluding that avocados wouldn't be profitable with the 30 percent cutbacks in water supply that took effect at the beginning of 2008, Curry said.

And the couple's retail operation, Temecula Olive Oil Co., yields larger profits than what he would make from selling olives, citrus or avocados in bulk to distributors, he said.

Even so, building up a commercially viable grove can be like block-to-block urban warfare against the olive fruit fly, bactrocera oleae, which took over most of Southern California's remaining groves in the course of the 1990s, Curry said. The insect doesn't harm the tree, but a few maggots can render a crop of whole olives unmarketable. And more than a few maggots in a batch of olives leave a bitter taste in oil that's extracted, Curry said.

At a 120-acre grove near Hemet, in central Riverside County, Curry is spraying intensively for the flies, reclaiming about five acres a year from them.

"You're going to be trapping around the clock and treating frequently," said Bill Oesterlein, deputy agricultural commissioner for Riverside County. "That may quickly eat away at your profits."

Curry agreed. He figures the organic pesticides and spraying adds about $5 to the cost of each gallon of oil.

Part of the struggle is isolating healthy groves from infested groves, and that is difficult on groves where surrounding estates plant olive trees for decoration, Curry and Oesterlein said. The life cycle of the fly ---- just three to four weeks ---- allows them to spread quickly.

Olive trees' rustic appeal is clear, but some estate owners get in over their head, Curry said, standing at the counter of Temecula Olive Oil Co., the couple's eight-year-old store in Old Town. Some come to him for advice in planting and tending them. He said he's often invited out to groves where owners want him to harvest and press their crop, but sometimes the first olive he picks has at least one visible maggot inside.

"I tell them every one is going to be like this," Curry said.

Contact staff writer Chris Bagley at (760) 740-5444 or cbagley@nctimes.com. Bagley blogs about local economic trends at www.nctimes.com/blogs/minding_your_business.