Oliveda/The Olive Tree People: $15,000 for what???!!

Bronwyn Rideout - 29 April 2024

The MLM Olive Tree People came to my attention a year ago, and I’ve been keeping my ears open for any news of expansion because the conceit of the entire MLM at present is something to behold. At the time, I was more interested in following a different MLM called Elomir. Elomir sold oral film strips that can apparently assist in mental clarity and weight management, but operations quickly flamed out due to poor stock management and poor stock in general. Some Elomir reps landed in The Olive Tree People MLM, just as some Monat reps are attracted to it now.

Origins

Olive Tree People founder Thomas Lommel is devoted to the bit. He loves olives and olive trees, supposedly consuming up to 50 litres of olive oil a year internally and externally. He claims that in his former life, he had founded a group of companies that included over 1000 employees and 17 corporations. At the age of 39, now an established real estate investor, he became ill and struggled with being on prescription medication. Wanting a holistic solution Lommel turned to olive trees, and tried to treat himself with their magic. He went beyond simply following the Mediterranean diet, creating a sort of Olive Tree Meditation despite not living near any olive trees; instead, the trees communicated with him.

In 1997 he left Germany and moved to Andalusia, Spain. He eventually purchased an olive tree grove, and built an Olive tree treehouse where he would work on the products that would eventually become Oliveda.

It should surprise no one then that Lommel states the following:

“From this moment on, there was no other thought than to treat myself with the power and magic of the trees. I went off of all strong medications overnight and did something I had never done before: I tried to feel myself into the trees and get in touch with them. To feel them, to develop a feeling for them, and to find answers to my related questions: How many olives do you need for one liter of oil? How many fruits does such a tree bear? How many trees stand on one hectare of land? It was a kind of meditation with and around these trees. After about six weeks, I had a feeling for each of my questions and searched for the suitable figure. The result was 5/20/100. A few days later, when I compared these intuitive figures with those in specialist literature, I was amazed. I couldn’t believe it, but the numbers corresponded 1:1 to those in the specialist literature I consulted. Could I really believe, that I had made a connection with the trees?”

Despite being an Atheist, I am surprised that none of the very Mormon or evangelical Christian consultants who are enrolling in this MLM are even thinking about whether this arbor-based magic is demonic.

Lommel didn’t let his business skills go to waste. While travelling in Italy in 2001 he came across an olive leaf tincture made by a local family. Somehow, he learned that olive leaves contain 3000 times more concentrated Oleuropein and Hydroxytyrosol than olive oil, and attributed his success with his olive oil regimen to this. The European Food Safety Authority would argue that the evidence of the health benefits of the olive leaf is insufficient, but facts hardly matter to MLMs. From this tincture Lommel developed his first product from olive tree leaf sap, called the 101 Elixir. This product led to the founding of Oliveda in 2003; Oliveda being a range of natural skin care products derived from olive oil and olive tree leaf extract.

The pseudoscience

Lommel would later open Oliveda Spa at the Son Brull hotel in Mallorca, Spain. Lommel did not shy from making medical claims about the effectiveness of the spa’s treatments, or how those benefits were confirmed by conventional medicine. To be clear, the Western doctor that Lommel refers to is Peter Fleischhauer, who wrote a supportive letter based on the outcomes of a single patient. Fleischhauer is also a practitioner of acupuncture and osteopathy, and is a Chiropractor; I have not been able to confirm if he is still in practice, however it appears that he did attend a legitimate university. Lommel either sold the spa, or the spa is no longer affiliated with Oliveda, as their offerings appear to now be the standard wellness/sanctuary fare.

2015 would be a big year for Lommel and Oliveda. First, there was the opening of a storefront in Berlin called the Olive Tree Pharmacy, which was soon followed with expansion with stores in Düsseldorf and Taipei. Following in the steps of many a Homeopathy shop, Olive Tree Pharmacy used brown flasks and bottles to simulate the authority and authenticity of an actual pharmacy.

Lommel would also launch the original Olive Tree People Project in the same year. Allegedly developed with artists, university professors, physicists, and IT Specialists, Lommel designed a “high-tech” system that connected people to the energy and therapeutic benefits of olive tree homeopathy. Early versions of the Olive Tree People Project hint at the actual device Lommel and his team came up with.

Lommel and team installing relays to trees and setting up receiving stations in an Olive tree grove, c 2015.

As the archive website from 2017 states, the energy of the olive trees “… is transmitted to a specially designed receiving station via a relay that is directly attached to the tree. The energy is then synced in real-time into the internet”. The mountain olive trees in Junta de Andalucía are special to the project because, unlike plants that come from greenhouses or monocultures, these trees “…bear the unadulterated ancient knowledge of Mother Nature which balances and has a regulating effect on us”. Lommel further emphasises the purity of these energies by describing the trees used as extensively managed, not receiving additional water or being sprayed/fertilised for years.

Lommel and his olive tree treehouse

Lommel has publicly moved away from promoting this relay design, and instead now shows a single image of a dendrometer with minimal context for how it is being used to transmit olive tree frequencies.

Like many a huckster before him, Lommel hides the pseudoscience with a very thin veneer of legitimacy. A Dendrometer is a sensor used to measure the diameter or radial growth of a tree, the tree’s water uptake and usage, and response to environmental changes. Their appearance can vary depending on what you want to measure, and whether that measurement needs to be non-contact or contact-based. The data that a dendrometer produces can be illustrated in many ways, as shown in this page from Washington State University.

Now, Lommel does not elucidate how they transform the data from the trees into the audio frequencies. It is possibly very generous to think that Lommel is genuine in his belief about olive tree frequencies, and actually attached a dendrometer to hundreds of trees; everything is falsifiable here. If we do take Lommel at his word, then he is invested in two branches of pseudoscience.

One is the Backster Effect. Named for Grover Cleveland “Cleve” Backster Jr., it claims that plants can communicate with other lifeforms. Backster was a CIA interrogation specialist in the 1960s, making it no surprise that his experiments were inclined towards the use of the polygraph machine as a tool. He claims to have noticed a change in electrical resistance when a plant attached to a polygraph was harmed, and later found that plants could produce readings similar to humans. Attempts to replicate Backster’s findings have not been successful.

The second branch of pseudoscience regards the healing properties of certain audio frequencies, known as solfeggio frequencies. Committee member Brad MacClure wrote about this in the July 3rd, 2023 edition of the newsletter, and spoke about it on the Yeah…Nah Podcast the same month. The Olive Tree People offers online meditation classes for consumers to power their goals or receive healing at specific frequencies. There’s no word on what happens if the tree is having a bad day and sending out bad frequencies.

The products

It isn’t enough for Lommel to simply transmit the olive tree frequencies through WiFi. The Olive Tree has long promoted a $15,000 piece of artwork (called Big Olive) that will transmit 432Hz frequencies directly from your personal olive tree via WiFi or your work network. It is the pièce de résistance of the whole operation but, at that price tag, a very exclusive item. I have yet to see the consultants gush about being able to afford their own Big Olive artwork, and I wonder if it is even something the consultants could earn commission on.

The profiting ideas don’t stop there. The current version of the website promises several future products such as water and air purifiers, ear pods, and homewares. They have even expanded the Big Olive concept to their hemp line of products.

Another product that is on the website, but not yet available for purchase, is the sponsorship of your own 100-year old olive tree. Depending on your level of sponsorship (ranging for 100$/year to 2 years to $5000 per year for 10 years), you can get a “conservationist certificate”, a product discount, and a sizable voucher for each year of the harvest. No mention is made of the app, or whether you will have exclusive contact with your olive tree.

As for the skincare line that the MLM line is actually selling, the main claim is that it is waterless skincare. Lommel claims that conventional skincare contains about 70% water and 26% refined/dead oil, whereas his products contain his regenerative cell elixir and bioactive oils. Murial Bezanson gives a simple breakdown of the smoke and mirrors of these claims, chiefly that plants contain 60-70% water, and that water is frequently listed as a second ingredient in many of his products. Bezanson further points out that rather than formulate products for specific skin-type, the company claims that the intelligence of nature contained in their ingredients will automatically respond to the needs of an individual’s skin. An extraordinary claim that requires extraordinary evidence. Oil-based skin care is not appropriate for everyone, and can even cause breakouts.

How to follow what happens next

So far, Olive Tree People have only expanded their market to the US, and I haven’t come across any NZ Monat consultants moving to this newer MLM with an overseas upline (if that is even allowed). It is possible that Olive Tree People could flame out as quickly as it is growing, but in the event they make it to New Zealand shores, the Skeptics will be ready with some strongly worded letters to the ASA and other bodies.