Coolmunda Organic Olives is diverse, regenerative and resilient, and these things have kept the operation profitable for over 30 years.

Coolmunda Organic Olives has been providing Australian olive lovers with high-quality organic table olives and olive oil since its establishment in 1989. Their vision is to maintain a financially viable agribusiness grounded in regenerative farming practices while improving the health of the land.

Snapshot

Farm/Enterprise Name: Coolmunda Organic Olives

Farm/Enterprise Location: Coolmunda (Inglewood), Queensland, Australia

Type of Enterprise: Table olives, olive oil, lamb

Primary Markets Served: Australian domestic

Staffing: 5 (fluctuates depending on season)

Property Size: 480ha

Property Elevation: 280m

Average Annual Rainfall: 600mm

Climate: Semi-Arid Mediterrannean

Soil Types: Clayey Sand

Website: www.coolmundaolives.com

History

Boom, buts and new possibilities; these trees have withstood the tests of time.

Coolmunda Organic Olives was established by Colin Owen and his wife, Gesine, in 1989 during the state's olive growing boom. At the time, Inglewood was labelled the olive capital of Queensland, and hundreds of thousands of olive trees were planted around the region by various independent farmers, investors and corporations. There were even olive festivals celebrating this new growing region.

According to Katie Baker, the couple's daughter and Coolmunda's executive director, 'Farmers were being told that if they planted a few hundred olive trees, their retirement would be paid for.'

Sadly, the region's olive success was short-lived. One of the largest operations in the area, Barkworths, folded within five years of planting, and its 500,000 olive trees were left to grow wild. Many newly planted olive groves were sold, and most producers gave up on olives entirely. Coolmunda was one of the few that survived.

Colin and Gesine took many fact-finding trips overseas to some of the world's top olive-growing regions. They used the knowledge gleaned from these trips to learn all they could about olive farming, plan the layout of growing areas and develop their first onsite processing plant. The plant has had several additions and renovations since it was first built. In 2015 they imported a traditional olive pressing machine from Italy and, later, twenty 1,000-litre fibreglass vats from Turkey.

Today, 9,000 olive trees of 10 different varieties grow on the property. Colin and Gesine still help out, but most of the day-to-day operations are carried out by their daughter Katie, and their son, David, who specialises in caring for the farm's Dorper sheep flock. They also have several employees who help with land care and fruit processing.

Challenge: Diversifying operation to survive bad seasons and fluctuating market demand

Diversification / Markets

Farming, in general, is always a risky industry. Farmers depend on rain, climate and the market, while pests, disease and extreme weather can wipe out a crop overnight. Farming operations remain profitable and successful when they have the resilience and diversity to survive inevitable bad seasons, market fluctuations and the many other challenges growers face.

Farming operations remain profitable and successful when they have the resilience and diversity to survive inevitable bad seasons, market fluctuations and the many other challenges growers face.

One of the reasons that so many operations folded within five years of the start of Queensland's olive boom was because olive farming involves significant expenditure upfront with no output for several years after planting. Some varieties can take up to 12 years after planting to bear fruit.

For this reason, Coolmunda needed to be diverse enough to survive the initial expenditure and following years while the trees were maturing to a fruit-bearing age.

Solution

Before the Owen family became farmers, Colin was a medical doctor working in general practice in Inglewood. He has been the local GP for the last 50 years, and this supplementary income helped subsidise the olive growing operation during its early years.

Despite the security of this off-farm income, Colin and Gesine also strove to diversify their operation to produce more than just olives. They developed an agroforestry system on the property, planting Eucalyptus Crebra, a native hardwood whose timber is sought after for construction. Their growing system is similar to a syntropic approach, with plantings spaced out over the years to create a multilayered canopy, mimicking a naturally occurring forest. This system means that when mature trees are ready to be harvested, the understory trees can grow up to replace the canopy, and so on.

The family hopes never to harvest these trees; however, given the growing scarcity of hardwoods, they believe their forests will give their enterprise financial value and stability in the decades ahead.

In addition to their hardwood forest, the farm has a flock of Dorper sheep for breeding and lamb production.

In addition to their hardwood forest, the farm has a flock of Dorper sheep for breeding and lamb production. Dorpers are a South African breed of hardy, low-maintenance sheep, well adapted to Australian conditions, including semi-arid environments like Coolmunda. Dorpers are a prime lamb-producing breed as the ewes have three lambing seasons every two years instead of just one per year. They also commonly have multiple births, meaning the lamb output is high, so running the herd is financially practical.

Outcome

Coolmunda has remained resilient because of its diversity and Colin's hard work in his medical practice while the operation was in its infancy. They now have several successful enterprises within the operation that all add to Coolmunda's profitability and resilience. These ventures also add to the land's biodiversity and improve the property's overall health, which benefits olive production.

Challenge: Maintaining organic status by finding alternate production, pest control and weed control methods

Organic / Pest & Disease Management

The Owen family's vision is to leave Coolmunda in better health than before they started planting there. Therefore, many farming and processing techniques are already aligned with organic practices. For that reason, Gesine and Colin began getting the operation organically certified from quite early on, which involved a continual process of reporting and reviewing.

To maintain their organic certification, they needed to implement alternative production, weed control and pest control methods.

To maintain their organic certification, they needed to implement alternative production, weed control and pest control methods.

One of their most common challenges was dealing with weeds that most producers would use herbicide sprays to control. The other threat to their crop was the lace bug, a native sap-sucking insect that can delay fruiting and even defoliate and kill olive trees in extreme infestations. They wanted to manage these issues with organic control methods rather than spraying with harsh herbicides and pesticides.

Solution

Dorpas bringing new life to Coolmunda's soils and balance sheets.

Coolmunda's Dorper sheep herd is run in a time-controlled grazing system between three of the nine olive groves on the property. They are usually left in each grove for two to four weeks before moving to the next, allowing the groves adequate rest time between grazing.

The herd carry out the work traditional herbicides would do by munching on weeds in the groves. They also contribute to general land care by keeping the inter-row grasses down, pruning the olive trees and fertilising with their manure. This makes the herd an even more advantageous investment as the farm profits from trading lambs and the olive groves benefit from their presence.

The way that the team at Coolmunda organically deals with the destructive lace bug is similarly ingenious. Opting to manage the pests using biological control, they sourced another native insect, the green lacewing, from an integrated pest management company called Bugs for Bugs. The Toowoomba-based company provides non-toxic alternatives to conventional pesticides in the form of insects that prey on pests. The team scattered several tubes of green lacewing eggs in the olive groves, and when they hatched, the lace bug population started to decrease.

Opting to manage the destructive lace bug using biological control, they sourced another native insect, the green lacewing, from an integrated pest management company

They have also applied several other methods to optimise the productivity of the olive groves. Colin has developed a native sclerophyll arboretum across a block of around 40 hectares. The area is planted with a cornucopia of species, including ironbark, box eucalyptus, white cypress, pine, belah wattle and brigalow. This arboretum contributes to the land's biodiversity and creates a polyculture system. Several native species also encourage pollinators to inhabit the area, which then pollinate the olive trees when they are in flower, increasing yield.

The team can also ensure that their processing of olives adheres to organic certification standards because all fruit is handled at their onsite plant, which they clean and manage under the NASAA organic certification standard.

Outcome

These organic management systems have allowed the family to maintain the health and prosperity of their farm, as well as their organic certification.

According to Katie, 'Even if we weren't organically certified, we would still be using all of these processes, so it makes sense to continue with the certification as it gives our customers peace of mind that we are producing in this way.'

Future plans

The team at Coolmunda are always looking at new ways to diversify their operation further and introduce new best-practice production techniques. They are starting to explore inter-row cover cropping to encourage populations of beneficial insects and further the farm's biodiversity.

They hope to build up their Dorper herd so that lamb output is high enough for an organic processing facility to take them. Currently, the output numbers aren't high enough for this to be considered viable for these facilities. Katie says they are working towards this because they want to minimise the animals' stress by only transporting them once.

Finally, they have room for several thousand more trees, so they may plant another olive grove in the coming years.

Related Articles