This year, a poor olive crop is expected in California (USA)

California’s 2011 olive crop forecast is 65,000 tons, down 67 percent from last year. Growers started the growing season with expectations of a lower crop after last year's record production.

Weather conditions during the bloom period adversely impacted the crop. Many orchards were stressed after the previous crop and would not have produced an average crop under ideal growing conditions. Cool weather experienced during the beginning of the growing season set the crop’s development slightly behind normal.

The crop was looking more positive for growers intending to produce olive oil rather than canned olives. Agricultural practices common among olive oil producers seem to have played a role in limiting the impact of the olive’s alternate bearing cycle.

The present year, some counties have been designated as natural disaster areas by the U.S. Department of Agriculture due to the bad olive crop. The losses are very important and according with the opinions of the farmers, the crop damage was caused by unseasonably warm weather in January and freezing temperatures in February and March. In addition, when the trees were in bloom they had a lot of rain.

Another aspect to the disaster reason is last year's late harvest and a extremely large 2010 harvest.

It seams that, hardest hit were the Manzanillo olive trees with around of 80% of loss.

However, it seems that the most important industries have enough olive stock from last crop to cover the necessities of canned table olives next year

One of the impacts the crop loss will have on the community concerns a lack of seasonal employment