Why Frantoio Grove Relies on Regenerative Agriculture
Examing olives photo courtesy Frantoio Grove
Thanks to owner Patrick Martin’s regenerative farming approach, Frantoio Grove of San Martin, California is producing olive oil that both delights the taste buds and benefits the environment. Jeff Martin, Patrick’s father, planted Frantoio Grove’s 30 acres of olive trees in 2005. “I was around helping out—I was in high school at the time,” says Patrick Martin, a 6th generation farmer. He eventually returned to the farm after a career in coffee roasting, and farming has been his full-time job for the past 4 years.
Cultivars
The vast majority of the olive trees are the frantoio cultivar, with a handful of pendolino and lecchino trees to assist with pollination. “[frantoio] is a Tuscan variety. It’s known for producing bright, pungent, grassy oil,” says Martin. “A lot of the production in California is arbequina and arbosana, a little bit of koroneiki. These are varieties that are bred to be grown in super high density, by planting them very close together and pruning them into a hedge [...] If it’s done right, it can be a good quality oil, but it’s just not as interesting. We wanted to plant something different.”
Patrick examining compost photo courtesy Frantoio Grove
Farming
Frantoio Grove became organic certified in 2017. “We didn’t really change anything about what we did, we just figured it was kind of time to go through all the paperwork and do it,” explains Martin.
However, Martin has significantly changed his farming methods in recent years. During very wet winters, fungal diseases took hold, and in 2020 and 2022, there weren’t enough olives to harvest. “The agronomists had a standard playbook we’d been more or less following, but it didn’t really do much for us as far as good, consistent yields,” says Martin. “The agronomists were just recommending more fertilizer, more fungicide, more chemicals, more, more, more, more, more. These things don’t do anything for the farm or the soil, they just kind of fatten up the trees. It’s almost like keeping your trees on life support.”
“Following the standard model was going to cause us to spend more than we could really afford on fertilizer,” he continues. “We had to look elsewhere.”
Regenerative Practices
Patrick Martin driving tractor photo courtesy Frantoio Grove
Ultimately, Martin adopted a regenerative farming approach that focuses on restoring the health of the farm’s soil to build the trees’ resistance to pests and disease. “We’ve been seeing a lot of really great results. We just became the first regenerative organic certified olive farm and mill in the world in December,” he says. “We are still developing the methods we use on the farm, and figuring out how everything works. But we’re getting to the point where we have a lot of things that work for us.”
There are various schools of thought that make up the regenerative agriculture movement, and Frantoio Grove uses complementary practices from the holistic management, biodynamics, and Korean natural farming approaches.
One holistic management practice Martin has implemented is adding livestock. A flock of 30 sheep and a llama graze among the olive trees, rotating to a new spot nearly every day to cycle nutrients through the orchard.
Other holistic management practices include a variety of compost processes and planting a diverse mix of cover crops. “Having more diversity of species in your cover crop is a great way to increase the microbial activity in your soil,” says Martin. “We’re doing 15 different species, plus we don’t do any tillage or mowing before we plant, so we also have native vegetation growing in the soil.”
Martin also incorporates some techniques inspired by biodynamics, such as applying an onion-garlic-turmeric extraction. “There’s a lot of scientific research on the extracts of these plants, and applications can bolster the strength of the crops, producing better quality and higher yields,” he says.
The final approach he’s found useful is Korean natural farming, which is based on capturing indigenous microbes, cultivating them, and then applying them to the plants. The goal is to create a symbiotic relationship between the microbes and olive trees that can reduce the amount of fertilizer needed and boost the trees’ immune response. “When you have these interactions, then the plant is able to put more energy into producing better quality fruit with higher polyphenols and aromatic compounds, other vitamins, and nutrients that help us make better-quality olive oil,” he says.
Martin notes that the biggest challenge of regenerative farming is the sheer volume of work required to figure everything out. “There’s a lot of information out there, but a lot of it is general information as far as concepts. We’ve had to figure out how to turn those concepts into something we can do on the farm,” he says. However, he also enjoys that aspect of his work, which includes reading research papers, doing chemistry calculations, and building custom equipment. He’s in the process of writing a series of posts about regenerative farming for the Frantoio Grove blog, both to assist other farmers with specific recipes and techniques and also to educate the public about the possibilities of regenerative farming.
Better Oil
Frantoio Grove oil photo courtesy Frantoio Grove
In addition to ensuring consistent yields, Martin hopes that regenerative farming will help him create a high polyphenol, flavorful oil with less of the bitterness and astringency that often develop when a tree is stressed. “Last year we hit the ground running with a lot of these ideas. We did get some of the lots [of olive oil] that were very much exactly what I was looking for as far as bright, aromatic, lively, but very, very low bitterness,” he says. “We are still figuring out how everything fits together. But basically, by focusing on the metabolic health of the tree, we can produce a more flavorful, balanced olive oil.”
Milling
Mill at Frantoio Grove photo courtesy Frantoio Grove
Martin’s innovative, DIY mindset extends to Frantoio Grove’s on-site mill. Typically, mills use a two-step centrifuge process to extract and clarify the olive oil before it’s filtered. Water is added to the oil before it goes through the second centrifuge to help remove the sediments from the olive oil. Unfortunately, the water also dissolves some of the polyphenols and aromatic compounds that flavor the oil. Martin has designed a pre-filtering process that uses coarse pre-filters and a settling tank so that the olive oil can skip the second centrifuge and go straight to the filter. “You get an oil that’s more intensely flavored—there’s more polyphenols, there’s more aromatics. It’s a more sparkly oil,” he says.
After milling, Frantoio Grove stores their olive oil under nitrogen gas to minimize oxygen exposure and keep the olive oil fresh. Nitrogen can be tricky to work with, so Martin has developed a nitrogen gas sparging system that infuses the oil with nitrogen as it’s coming through the filter, which pushes the dissolved oxygen out of the olive oil.
“We want to make sure we’re doing as much as we can on the farm, because that’s where the quality is actually made. When we get to the mill, we want to do as much as we can to preserve the quality of the fruit as we extract the oil and then store it,” he says.
Other Regenerative Farming Benefits
The potential of regenerative farming extends far beyond creating more flavorful olive oil. “By growing healthy crops, we’re able to capture more CO2 because the plant is photosynthesizing more efficiently,” says Martin. “When the plant has extra carbohydrates it puts them in the soil to feed the microbes. What that means is that a lot of the CO2 in the atmosphere gets put into soil and stays there in a very stable form.”
“The concepts and the principles [of regenerative agriculture] are universal, so any farm can do this, whether it’s a 2-acre cherry farm or a 1,000-acre corn farm,” he continues. “Everybody who has soil can start treating their soil with respect [...] If every farm in the world started doing this, we’d be able to take a lot of the carbon in the atmosphere and put it back in the soil.”