Your Lindsay Olives won't come from Lindsay anymore.

Tulare County olive growers are reeling after Bell-Carter, a major California table-olive processor, terminated contracts to buy fruit from orchards across the state without notice.

Up to 4,500 acres of Tulare County olives will likely go fallow this year after the company canceled all but seven of its contracts with growers in the region.

That represents a significant chunk of the total 10,000 acres of olives planted in Tulare County last year, according to an Ag Commissioner's report.

"This termination is effective immediately and we will not receive your harvest in 2019," Bell-Carter wrote in a letter to growers.

Growers estimate 31,500 tons — 63 million pounds — of Tulare County olives will not be harvested and brought to market this year as a result.

That amounts to a $40 million loss in gross revenues in Tulare County alone, and industry leaders say tariffs are to blame.

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“As a canner and marketer of table olives, Bell-Carter must compete in a global marketplace,” Bell-Carter's letter continued. "With the continually increasing costs of table olives in California, we have not been able to compete with our foreign competition and have made the decision to reduce our contracted acreage in California."

Bell-Carter did not immediately return Times-Delta requests for comment. Valley Representatives Devin Nunes (R-Visalia) and Tj Cox (D-Hanford) were unavailable for comment.

Growers affected

Visalia olive farmer John Werner's troubles began earlier this month.

One evening, a labor contractor who prunes Werner's trees called to ask if he had heard anything about Bell-Carter cancelling its contracts with growers.

The pruner had been working with a crew in another olive orchard, when the orchard's owner came out and said, "Stop work. We are done." He had just checked his mailbox and received his nixed contract from Bell-Carter.

Werner next received a text message from a consultant asking him the same thing: Had his contract been canceled?

Werner hadn't received a cancellation notice yet, so he reached out to his Bell-Carter representative directly.

"He replied shortly and apologetically broke it to me: I would be receiving a letter soon. I had been canceled," Werner said. "I told my wife and kids. We were done."

Werner grows manzanillo olives, the kind used to make the black olives you buy by the can.

"If you have ever bought Lindsay Olives, then you have likely eaten olives grown right here in the Valley and packed by Bell-Carter," Werner said. "Maybe you have even eaten an olive I grew. Maybe your kids have stuck one of my olives on their fingers…like my kids do."

Industry impacts

The impacts of Bell-Carter's move will reverberate throughout Tulare County's ag industry and across the country, growers and ag leaders said.

Since olive orchards operate on razor-thin margins, it's the associated fieldworkers —harvesters, pruners, etc. — who will also be out of jobs and hurting financially this year.

"The impacts to our local economy will be felt by many, including the olive growers who have lost their processing contracts, and the 1,500 estimated farm workers who could find their annual income severely impacted by the loss of the harvest work that is traditionally done in September and October when olive picking occurs," said Tricia Stever Blattler, Tulare County Farm Bureau executive director.

Additionally, because removing an orchard is expensive, most growers' fields are likely to lay fallow. This poses safety concerns because a fallow field is a vector for pests and diseases that could potentially spread to neighboring fields that remain in production.

California's only other major table-olive processor, Musco Family Olive Co., is unlikely to be able to take on the displaced growers' contracts, as they lack the capacity to process the magnitude of tonnage released by Bell-Carter.

Some have suggested that local growers form their own cooperative and begin processing their own olives.

But that's expensive and impractical, Werner said.

"Just about every (olive grower) is a small farmer. They do not have the resources to start a new processing plant on their own or through a cooperative," Werner said. "Even if they did, it would take years to establish such a plant."

"We need relief now," he added.

Tariff troubles

Growers and industry experts say tariff troubles are to blame for the contract cancellations.

Last July, Bell-Carter filed complaints with the U.S. International Trade Commission against Spanish olive company Dcoop, claiming that Spanish olive imports were hurting local growers.

In Spain, the olive industry is heavily subsided by the government. Dcoop also sources olives from Morocco and Argentina, whose olive orchards have a documented history of child labor abuses

"I cannot compete against subsidized Spanish olive growers and Argentine olive growers using child labor," Werner said. "If this continues, there is a high likelihood that the American consumer will be eating olives from Argentina — from the fingers of their children to the fingers of ours. We cannot support that."

The Trump administration used those complaints as a basis for a hefty 37.4 percent tariff on processed table-olive imports. Last August, Dcoop acquired a 20-percent stake in Bell-Carter, the California processor.

The acquisition was widely seen as a way for the European conglomerate to avoid Trump's tariffs through a loophole — by funneling their raw Spanish and Argentinian olives, which aren't subject to tariffs, to California for processing.

Bell-Carter assured local growers that the acquisition would benefit them, granting them access to a vast global marketplace. The company told growers they would, in fact, require more olives to keep up with demand, according to Bell-Carter in 2018.

Dcoop's leadership painted a very different picture, however, telling trade publications that they planned to become Bell-Carter's sole provider of unprocessed olives.

“We will ship our product from Spain, but the oxidation process for the production of the black olives will take place (in the U.S.), so they will be exempt from the payment of the tariffs,” Antonio Luque, Dcoop president, told the Olive Oil Times last August.

Joshua Yeager covers water, agriculture, parks and housing for the Visalia Times-Delta and Tulare Advance-Register newspapers. Follow him on Twitter @VTD_Joshy. Get alerts and keep up on all things Tulare County for as little as $1 a month. Subscribe today.