The US is facing a reduction of olive oil, the result of poor harvests after unusual weather in early 2018. CGTN's Phil Lavelle reports from olive farms in California. 

Olive oil's a big export from California. But there may be less of it to export in the coming months.

JERRY SHAFFER  OLIVE GROWER, FANDANGO OLIVE OIL "This year, we're down maybe a third from last year."

A poor harvest, predicted on olive farms. Unofficial estimates putting yields down 25 percent to 35 percent in some places.

"Borderline Catastrophic" - the alarming headline being written. Not quite that bad for Jerry - but he's still concerned.

JERRY SHAFFER  OLIVE GROWER, FANDANGO OLIVE OIL "A good amount would be ten tons and this year we'll probably be down much less than that."

California's crazy weather, being blamed. A short, unseasonal heatwave last winter, confusing nature, sending predicted yields all over the place.

JERRY SHAFFER OLIVE GROWER, FANDANGO OLIVE OIL "We had a cold spell, then a heat spell. Much warmer than normal winter weather. The trees thought it was springtime, so they started to bud out and some were even flowering. And then right behind it, the cold weather came back in, typical weather in winter. And then everything that was on the trees fell off and so we have areas in this orchard that are spotty and don't have any olives."

PHIL LAVELLE PASO ROBLES, CENTRAL CALIFORNIA "Olive trees are alternate bearing. So what that means is you tend to have a good harvest one year, then a not so good harvest the next. Last year, the harvest was described as amazing, phenomenal so the expectation was always that it wouldn't be so great this year and that is before you factor in that extremely unusual weather earlier this year."

California has more than 400 olive growers. Some 75 different olive varieties come from here. In 2017, around four million gallons of olive oil was produced here. Up from 3.5 million the year before.

Jerry's farm is relatively small - which means he's in a less precarious position than others.

JERRY SHAFFER  OLIVE GROWER "Most of the small growers are not 100 percent dependent on the income like the large growers, that's their main business."

And they were also able to prepare themselves?

CAROLYN SHAFFER HEAD OF MARKETING, FANDANGO OLIVE OIL "We knew early on because of the weather that we had the first quarter that we had to do some farming things to mitigate that. So we started our deficit watering, which is where you withhold the water, from the trees because you want to plump up the olives and you want to get more oil that way. So we were able to do that. The weather patterns, while it was a surprise when they happened, it wasn't a surprise that we couldn't mitigate?"

And so a predicted poor harvest meets unpredictable weather. There'll have to be some short-term changes:

CAROLYN SHAFFER  HEAD OF MARKETING, FANDANGO OLIVE OIL "What we will do - we won't take on as many bulk sales as we did this past year because we had some very loyal customers and they expect to get our olive oil all year round and we wanna keep them happy, so we'll do that."

But the olive growers are confident:

JERRY SHAFFER  OLIVE GROWER "We'll get through the year like we always do."

That they'll be back on top next year. Phil Lavelle, CGTN, Paso Robles, California.