
As California’s olive oil industry expands and refines, designations of various grades of oil are becoming more distinct and more identifiable.
Consumers will face challenges as they learn to differentiate between extra virgin (high-quality) and oil pressed from the pomace of cull olives. All of the oil is expected to move through one market level or another.
Help is on the way. A new California law specifies and adopts international olive oil grades. How that will affect marketing and movement of the growing supply of oil is discussed in a report by two agricultural and resource economists at the University of California, Davis.
Assistant Professor Travis Lybbert and Ph.D. candidate Christopher Gustafson wrote about the law and its effect in the January/February issue of Update, published by the university’s Giannini Foundation of Agricultural Economics