Gino Venitucci knows how to make money in growing olive trees

By STEPHEN THOMAS
The color is not the only green in olives. People make money growing olive trees.
Gino Venitucci is growing about 16,000 3-year-old olive trees on his farm near Devers. Next year, a commercially viable harvest will be in the offing in this alternative oil industry.
Reading from documents delineating the potential payoffs, Venitucci explained how profitable, per acre, olive tree growing could be, if the farmer lasts through the growing pains. He was not talking about the prospects in the rich soil of his native Italy.
“During the fourth year, in other words the fourth year after planting, the minimum one could obtain is $4,000 an acre — weather going bad, like this year, no rain, irrigation, missing fertilizing, or everything going wrong at one time,” Venitucci said, addressing the Oct. 26 Liberty-Dayton Area Chamber of Commerce Luncheon. “However, you could increase it to $6,000 the fourth year. Now as you go to the fifth and sixth years, you can go to $9,600 per acre, if all this is correct.
“A hundred acres, which is a relatively small amount for Southeast Texas, would be $960,000 for three months work. It wouldn’t be bad.”
The farmer is optimistic about his orchard’s potential.
“Next year, we definitely expect a large production,” Venitucci said, a few small bottles of home-grown olive oil lined up on the head table beside him.
Those bottled giveaways and assorted documents were gone within 5 minutes of the luncheon’s conclusion. The investment possibilities grabbed guests’ attention.
One could earn a bachelor’s degree in the time it takes to reach the first yield. The income may flow for generations thereafter.
Anyone preparing to grow olives for profit might brace for the investment per acre, as Venitucci explained.
“I would go with a minimum of $10,000 per acre over the four-year period because of the plants, the planting, the irrigation, the water wells or whatever you needed, and the machinery, and the diesel, and the labor,” Venitucci said. “The first four years are labor intensive.”
The income should outlast the farmer.
“If one estimates that 100 acres would cost $1 million … but you would get it back in the fourth year of production or fifth year of production,” Venitucci said. “Then, for generations, you wouldn’t have to worry about it. Accept that income every year. It’s justifiable.”
If the olive oil industry means anything to some Texas farmers, it is a source of hope amid hard times that transcend the region’s drought.
“I was an ag lender for most of my life, in a bank, and I am fond of agriculture,” Venitucci’s friend Bob Jamison said, following the luncheon. “I am aware of their plight, with the falling prices, increase in labor, and the embargo against exports. Everything that could happen to a farmer has happened.
“But this is an occasion where they can make several thousand dollars off of only one acre. Where a rice farmer has to have 300 to 500 acres, to break even, these people can do it in a home farm, like 50 acres or less.”
Olive oil’s expansive culinary utility potentially sweetens the deal for growers, Jamison said.
“It is a good thing for agriculture; it is a great thing for the product that is so helpful,” Jamison said. “Every medical facility will tout the benefit of olive oil.”