From Xylella to drought, a sector in the trenches

Listen to the audio version of the article

There is no peace for the olive trees of Puglia, the first region of Italy for oil, responsible for half of the national production. The scars on Terlizzi’s plants add up to the drought that hit the last olive growing campaign, and above all to the disasters of Xylella. In October it will be ten years since the first appearance of the killer bacterium of olive trees, and since then the face of Puglia has never been the same.

Starting from Gallipoli, from 2013 to today Xylella has never stopped walking, and after having wiped out the olive-growing heritage of Salento and seriously compromised the olive groves of Brindisi and Taranto, it has now reached the province of Bari, where a new infected area called “Valle d’Itria” with active outbreaks in the municipalities of Monopoli, Polignano and Castellana Grotte. Traveling from trunk to trunk, according to Coldiretti, the killer bacterium has already infected over 21 million plants, a massacre of olive trees that has left a ghostly panorama, with over 8 thousand square kilometers of infected territory equal to 40% of the whole region.

Due to Xylella, 3 out of 4 olives were lost only in the province of Lecce, with the collapse of 75% of the production of olive oil. In the province of Brindisi, on the other hand, the harvest has suffered a general reduction of 20-25% also due to atmospheric events, including the absence of rainfall and high temperatures which have stressed and weakened the olive groves. Amid climate change and killer bacteria, Puglia saw a 40 percent cut in olive oil production earlier this year.

«First of all, the European Union’s border control system is under accusation regarding Xylella – claims the president of Coldiretti, Ettore Prandini – that of the EU is a too permissive policy, which allows the entry of agri-food and flower and nursery products without the precautions and quarantines that national products must instead overcome when they are exported are applied, with exhausting negotiations and dossiers that last years”.

As for the national emergency management part, however, Prandini points the finger at the slowness of the bureaucracy, which prevents the competitive rebirth of the affected territories: «Three years after the publication of the extraordinary plan for the regeneration of olive trees in Puglia worth 300 million euro, only the liquidation of the first resources for the removal and replanting of dried olive trees has just started. In this way, farmers have not yet been put in a position to start working and producing again».