The Italian tourism sector, which suffered a severe blow with the travel restrictions imposed by Covid, is now facing the loss of one of its most popular natural attractions, monumental olive trees.
In early November 2021, the Italian government ordered to uproot 1,150 olive trees located in the Piana degli Ulivi Monumentali (Plain of Monumental Olive Trees). This belongs to the Apulia region of southern Italy, which in turn attracts millions of tourists.
Indeed, the felled trees were infected by Xylella fastidiosa, a bacterium that slowly suffocates olive trees to death. So far, 20 of Italy’s 150 million olive trees have been infected. Most of them in the Apulia Region, which used to provide up to 50% of Italy’s total annual olive oil production.
As a consequence, the infected trees were uprooted because they were in a buffer zone. Thus, by creating a firebreak, the Italian government is trying to prevent the disease from spreading further north. Even with its elimination, the disease may wipe out Piana’s 250,000 monumental olive trees, estimated to be 2,000 years old.
Xylella arrived in Italy in the early 2010s from Latin America. According to Ettore Prandini, president of Coldiretti, Italy’s leading growers’ association, the bacterium has caused more than $1.2 billion in damage to Puglia’s economy in the last decade. The spread has halted olive production and shut down olive mills.
“Apulia is facing one of the worst plant epidemics in history”, says Donato Boscia, plant virologist and senior Xylella researcher at the Institute for Sustainable Plant Protection in Bari (CNR-IPSP). “For the rest of the Mediterranean [Xylella] is a very concrete threat.”
Source: Bloomberg