Are olive trees native to California?
No. Olive trees originated in Asia Minor, spreading about 6,000 years ago from Iran, Syria and Palestine to the rest of the Mediterranean region. Records show that in the mid-1500s, olive tree cuttings were taken by the Spaniards to Peru. In the 1700s, Franciscan monks brought olives to Mexico and northward as they established the California mission system. The first recorded planting of an olive tree in California was in 1769 at Mission San Diego de Alcala. How old is the California olive industry? Commercial olive farming in California began in the late 1800s, primarily in the valleys of Central and Northern California. Those early olive crops went into olive-oil production but, in the early 1900s, the industry shifted, as canning technology resulted in higher returns for table olives than for oil. Today, 90 percent of California’s olive production is for canned olives, with only 10 percent crushed for oil. This is just the opposite of Spain, the world’s leading olive producer, which
