California olive ranch to plant 500,000 trees in Glenn County
When a California grower plants 500,000 olive trees on a few hundred acres, it is not gardening — it is industry. The super-high-density orchard, harvested like a vineyard by machine, is the model that made cheap domestic extra virgin possible and reshaped the world’s groves.
Planting half a million olive trees on under a thousand acres sounds absurd until you understand the system behind it. This is super-high-density (SHD) or hedgerow planting, and it turns the olive — historically a big, sprawling, slow, hand-picked tree — into something closer to a vineyard row. The trees go in close together, are trained into a continuous hedge, and are straddled by a machine that harvests the fruit as it drives. It is how a modern producer more than doubles output without a small army of pickers, and it is the quiet revolution behind the wave of affordable domestic extra virgin.
How super-high-density works
In a traditional grove, trees stand well apart and can take many years to bear; picking is slow, skilled and expensive. SHD flips all of that. Trees are packed into narrow, trellised hedgerows, kept deliberately small, and start cropping within a few years. A grape-style straddle harvester then shakes and combs the fruit off as it rolls down the row, at a fraction of the cost and time of hand work. The catch is that only certain compact, early-bearing varieties suit the system — which is why one or two olives dominate it.
Why Arbequina rules the hedgerow
The variety that made SHD possible is the Spanish Arbequina — small, precocious, naturally compact and happy to be machine-harvested — with Arbosana and Koroneiki close behind. That is a real trade-off worth knowing about: the economics reward planting the same few machine-friendly olives over and over, which is efficient but narrows the genetic and flavour range of the oil we all drink. Arbequina oil is soft, buttery and approachable, easy to like and easy to sell — but a world planted only to Arbequina would be a blander one. The system’s great strength, uniformity, is also its quiet cost.
| Traditional grove | Super-high-density (SHD) | |
|---|---|---|
| Trees per acre | Dozens, widely spaced | Hundreds, in tight hedgerows |
| Time to crop | Many years | Around three years |
| Harvest | Hand or pole, slow | Straddle machine, fast |
| Best varieties | Almost any | Compact types: Arbequina, Arbosana |
| Oil style | Varied, characterful | Consistent, often mild |
What it means on the shelf
- SHD is why good, affordable extra virgin is now widely available — the cost of picking collapsed.
- Much of it is Arbequina: soft, buttery, mild — lovely, but not the whole olive story.
- For bolder, more distinctive oils, seek out traditional varieties and groves.
- SHD oil is usually fresh and well-made; judge it, as always, on harvest date and taste.
- The model’s efficiency comes with a quiet narrowing of variety — worth supporting diversity when you can.
Super-high-density olive orchards: common questions
What is a super-high-density olive orchard?
A planting system where olive trees are grown close together in trellised hedgerows, kept small, and harvested by a straddle machine like a vineyard — for high volume at low picking cost.
Why plant so many trees on so little land?
Density plus machine harvesting massively cuts the cost and time of picking, letting a producer greatly increase output without a large hand-picking workforce.
Which olives suit the system?
Compact, early-bearing varieties that tolerate machine harvest — above all Arbequina, with Arbosana and Koroneiki also common.
Is SHD oil good?
Often yes — it is usually fresh and consistent. Much of it is soft, mild Arbequina, so it is very approachable if not the boldest oil around.
Is there a downside?
Mainly a narrowing of variety: the economics favour the same few machine-friendly olives, which reduces the diversity of flavours grown.
Do not sneer at the hedgerow orchard — it is the reason you can buy honest extra virgin at a fair price, which was a fantasy a generation ago. But know what you are drinking. Most super-high-density oil is Arbequina: soft, buttery, easy, and everywhere. It is genuinely good, yet if the whole world plants only the two or three olives a machine likes, we lose range. Buy the mild SHD oil for every day, and go out of your way to buy a characterful traditional variety too. Diversity needs paying customers.
Drawn from the super-high-density (hedgerow) olive-growing model and its dominant machine-harvest varieties.