Texas olive industry branches out to meet growing demand
On the numbers, Texas should be olive country: hot, dry, mild winters, cheap land, an enormous domestic market next door. On the ground, one week of unusual cold in February 2021 undid most of a generation’s planting.
The Texas olive industry began in 1994 with roughly twenty thousand trees across four orchards, and for a long stretch it looked like one of the better agricultural bets in America. Trees went in the ground steadily, the state agriculture department promoted the sector, and by the late 2000s the plantings had reached the high tens of thousands of trees with more scheduled every autumn. The pitch made sense: the United States produces a tiny share of the world’s olive oil and consumes a very large share of it, so anyone who can grow olives inside the country is standing next to an enormous captive market. By the 2020s Texas had passed every state except California, with something on the order of three thousand acres in commercial production.
February 2021
Then came the winter storm that Texans still date things by. Temperatures crashed far below anything the industry had planned for, staying low for days rather than hours, and the effect on olive groves was not a reduced crop — it was dead wood. Trees north of the old US-90 line died back to the ground in trials and in commercial blocks alike. Because olives fruit on the previous year’s growth and take years to build a bearing canopy, killing the wood does not cost you one season; it costs you the several years it takes to rebuild the tree, assuming the roots survived at all.
What turned a disaster into a crisis was the sequence that followed. Growers replanted, and the young replacements — far more frost-tender than the mature trees they replaced — met further freezes in the seasons afterwards. Several consecutive years passed with essentially no commercial Texas olive harvest. An industry that had been described as poised for unprecedented growth was, within a few winters, described as being in limbo.
Why averages lie about olives
Here is the part that generalises far beyond Texas, and it is the single most useful thing in this story. Almost every climate assessment for a new olive region is built on averages: mean winter temperature, average rainfall, growing degree days, average last frost. Olives do not die of averages. They die of tails — the once-a-decade event that sits far outside the mean and is therefore invisible in the summary statistics that persuaded everyone to plant.
A region with a mild average winter and a hard freeze every fifteen years is a fundamentally different proposition from a region with the same average and no extremes, and no amount of good agronomy in the intervening years changes that. This is why experienced growers in marginal regions obsess over site selection — slope, cold-air drainage, proximity to water that moderates temperature — and why the sensible planning question is not what the winter is usually like, but what the worst winter in living memory did.
What Texas growers are doing about it
The responses have been pragmatic rather than heroic. Some have concentrated plantings further south, giving up the northward creep that the good years encouraged. Some have diversified income so that a lost harvest is a setback rather than an ending — tasting rooms, culinary tourism, events, bottled products bought in from elsewhere while their own trees recover. Trials continue on which varieties can take the cold, since the industry’s heavy reliance on Arbequina, chosen for its high oil content, drought tolerance and suitability for dense planting, concentrated its risk in one cultivar’s frost tolerance.
None of that is defeat. Olive growing on a frontier is a long game measured in decades, and a fifteen-year setback is survivable if the business behind the trees is built to absorb it. What is not survivable is a business model that assumed a harvest every single year.
| What was assumed | What actually happened | The lesson |
|---|---|---|
| Mild Texas winters suit olives | A single extreme freeze killed wood statewide | Plan for the tail event, not the average |
| Northward expansion was safe | Groves north of the old US-90 line died back | Marginal ground is only marginal until it is not |
| Replanting restores the crop | Young replants were killed by later freezes | Recovery needs consecutive mild winters, which are not guaranteed |
| Arbequina everywhere is efficient | One cultivar’s frost tolerance became systemic risk | Varietal diversity is insurance, not indulgence |
| Domestic demand guarantees a market | Demand held while supply vanished | Market access does not protect you from agronomy |
If you are planting somewhere new
- Ask what the worst winter did. Not the average winter. Talk to people who farmed there thirty years ago.
- Plant more than one variety. Frost tolerance differs sharply between cultivars, and a monoculture concentrates that risk.
- Choose slope and air drainage over convenience. Cold air pools; a few metres of elevation can decide whether a block survives.
- Build an income that survives a lost harvest. Tasting rooms and events are not a distraction from farming — in a marginal region they are what funds the replant.
- Expect to wait. Rebuilding a killed canopy takes years, and the tree decides the timetable.
Texas olives: common questions
Does Texas grow olives commercially?
Yes. The industry started in 1994 and grew to become the second-largest olive-growing state after California, with roughly three thousand acres in commercial production before recent freeze damage.
What happened in the 2021 freeze?
Winter Storm Uri brought temperatures far below what olive groves could withstand, for days. Trees died back to the ground across large areas, destroying bearing wood rather than merely a season’s crop.
Why did the industry not simply recover?
Because replanted young trees are more frost-tender than mature ones, and subsequent freezes killed many of them too. Several consecutive seasons passed with essentially no commercial harvest.
Which variety dominates in Texas?
Arbequina, chosen for high oil content, drought tolerance and suitability for dense planting. Its widespread use meant a single cultivar’s frost tolerance became a sector-wide risk.
Is Texas still a viable olive region?
Potentially, with southern siting, varietal diversity and businesses built to survive lost harvests. It is a long-horizon proposition rather than a reliable annual crop.
The thing I would say to any grower in a new olive region, and I would say it before they buy a single tree: the climate summary you were shown is an average, and averages have killed more groves than pests ever have. Find the oldest farmer in the county and ask what the worst winter in their life did to the fruit trees. That one conversation is worth more than a stack of climate data, because the olive does not care what your region usually does. It cares about the one week every fifteen years when your region does something else entirely.
Drawn from Texas Department of Agriculture reporting on the state’s olive sector, Texas A&M AgriLife accounts of freeze damage and crop failure, and published reporting on the industry after Winter Storm Uri.