“It’s a forgotten crisis: di Xylella we hardly speak anymore “: sounds the alarm Nicholas of Noia, general manager of Unaprol, the association of 160,000 companies in the olive sector. “I recently walked the roads of Salento and the view is terrible: they are kilometers and kilometers of a landscape dominated only by the ghostly image of olive trees killed by the killer bacterium. We should continue to encourage the search for new resistant cultivars, promote grafts on ancient olive trees to try to save, in addition to the economy, also the landscape and therefore tourism. The resources are there. More would be needed to spend them with useful actions to slow down the progress of the disease that could jeopardize the entire national olive growing ”.
The updated numbers of the drama Xylella leave no room for interpretation: 5-6 million olive trees lost, equal to about 25% of the 21 million olive trees cultivated in Salento; five thousand jobs burned; dozens and dozens of mills in crisis, many have closed, selling off their machinery abroad, between Greece, Morocco and Tunisia. And the fact that the crisis is essentially limited to Salento.
The “heel of the boot”, divided between the provinces of Brindisi, Lecce and Taranto, has seen its production drop on average by about 30 thousand tons of olive trees a year: a fact that allows us to say that the Xylella phenomenon , produced a contraction of about 10% of the entire Italian production, with a economic damage estimated at 130 million euros per year. Important numbers for a supply chain that at national level, calculates Ismea worth 2.2 billion euros only in the agricultural phase (plus another 3.2 billion in the industrial one), with 646 thousand companies, 1.16 million hectares cultivated and nearly 4,500 mills.
“Xylella should be treated as an emergency from a natural disaster, such as earthquakes”, summarizes the president of Unaprol David Granieri. A national emergency therefore, even if the epicenter is undoubtedly Salento, where the economic repercussions of the crisis are more evident. On the other hand, olive cultivation covers 60% of the agricultural area in Lecce, 58% in Brindisi and 27% in Taranto.
Precisely for this reason the limits and shortcomings found in the intervention plans they are worrying. Because it is true that the ascent towards the north of the killer bacterium seems to be slowing down, thanks to the interventions implemented by farmers, i.e. the creation of containment areas and multiplication of inspections, but the advance of the infection is far from over. Too late we started with systematic inspections, he denounced Coldiretti Puglia, and too late more advanced and scientific methods of investigations began to be used, instead of the simple visual examination of the plants, which after infection (and at that point there is no more to do) can nevertheless remain asymptomatic for a long time , even up to a couple of years.
Fortunately, in the meantime, there is also moving technology and satellite-based detection algorithms and techniques have come into play that promise a qualitative leap in interventions that, together with other innovations related to agriculture 4.0, can move the entire supply chain towards the goal of a more competitive agriculture and sustainable.
A qualitative leap that would also serve the administrative bureaucracy. As reported by Unaprol, on the 300 million euro olive regeneration plan launched by the government in March last year, the amount of expenditure actually committed is just over 50%, but there are 134 million still to be spent. In particular, replanting, ie the removal of infected and now dead trees (which in the meantime has also caused the price of olive wood to collapse due to the quantity of “supply” on the market, is slowing down with the new trees. For now, these are only two cultivars, the leccino and Fs17, a patent developed by the CNR and today produced by only 3 nurseries in Italy.
According to thePhytosanitary Observatory in the Puglia Region, 160,000 leccino trees have been replanted to date on 1,220 hectares and 226,000 FS17 plants on 2,270 hectares. In particular, 6% of the removal and replanting applications were financed, only 521 applications and 23 collective projects, due to the scarce resources of 40 million euros compared to a total request for 216 million euros. Same slowness in spending related to measure “Salva Frantoi”: the resources committed here amount to six million euros, out of a total availability of 35 million. Here in particular, the crux is the access requirements that do not allow the disused structures, sold abroad, to be able to start again.
.