IB Woman
Issue No. 26 - December/January 2005/06
Lives that revolve around olives
Lisa Rowntree
by Penelope Herbert
Lisa Rowntree relates her various roles to the challenges of diary farming.
“That’s the benchmark for the degree of difficulty,” she says. “So olive growing wasn’t so daunting.”
Confidence is the underlying attitude Lisa shares with husband, Jim, with whom she started an olive business on a 20-hectare orchard on the Limestone Coast six years ago.
In addition to growing their own olives, Lisa and Jim are managers for the 214 hectare Coonalpyn Olives Project, one of the first large-scale olive orchards in South Australia.
Lisa is also Director on the Australian Olive Association representing SA, has been President of Olives SA for the past three years and is Secretary of the Limestone Coast Olive Growers Association and is Editor of its newsletter.
In 2005, Lisa won the Rural Woman of the Year Award.
Lisa and Jim researched the olive industry before developing a business plan in order to gain support from the bank. All initial expenses went in to land, infrastructure and trees as Lisa’s research indicated there would be no financial return for at least three years and break-even after eight.
She believes that setting up on the Limestone Coast was a solid business decision due to lack of direct competition and economies of scale.
“In the Northern Region, there are 114 growers with 7,000 trees between them,” she explains. “And each grower has a tractor, a sprayer, a motorbike, etc.
“We grow and manage all 77,000 trees on the Limestone Coast with a fraction of that equipment.
“When it comes to olives, growers can either be big or boutique. There is room for boutique growers but my recommendation is that they work in a region and become part of a group, thus sharing expenses.”
Lisa also says that many boutique growers have additional off-farm income to supplement what is, essentially, a hobby or very strong interest in growing olives. She says that most of these...
