Fear of Ruin as Disease Takes Hold

of Italys Olive Trees

Across the stony heel of Italy, a peninsula ringed by the blue-green waters of the Mediterranean, olive trees have existed for centuries, shaping
the landscape and producing some of the nations finest olive oils. Except now, many of the trees are dying.
Sprinkled among the healthy trees are clusters of sick ones, denuded of leaves and standing like skeletons, their desiccated branches bereft of
olives. The trees are succumbing to a bacterial outbreak that is sweeping across one of Italys most famous olive regions, as families who have
manufactured olive oil for generations now fear ruin, even as officials in the rest of Europe fear a broader outbreak.
It is devastating, said Enzo Manni, the director of ACLI-Racale, an olive cooperative in the heart of the outbreak area. It is apocalyptic. I
compare it to an earthquake. Today, scientists estimate that one million olive trees in the peninsula, known as the Salento, are infected with
the bacterium, Xylella fastidiosa, a figure that could rise rapidly.
For Italy, which trails only Spain in annual olive oil production, the outbreak has forced a bitter bargain: To prevent the bacterium from
spreading north, officials are trying to quarantine the outbreak in the lower half of the Salento, where most of the contaminated trees are, by
carving a buffer zone that would serve as a sort of biological firebreak.
The Italian olive industry endured a terrible 2014 from bad weather and a nasty infestation of the olive fruit fly. But those are familiar problems.
The bacterial outbreak which is believed to have arrived with plants imported from Costa Rica and has already destroyed citrus trees in
Brazil and vineyards in California poses a new danger for all of European agriculture.
In Brussels, the European Commission has backed off earlier proposals to cull millions of trees in the Salento and instead endorsed the Italian
buffer zone as well as other surveillance ones north of the peninsula. The commission is also expected to soon enact a policy that would
demand swift culling in the case of any new outbreaks in other regions. And France has moved to protect its vineyards by banning the
importation of certain species of plants from Puglia, the region of Italy that includes the Salento.
The most important thing is that the disease doesnt spread to the north, Enrico Brivio, a European Commission spokesman, said. Of olive
growers in the Salento, he added: We sympathize with them. There are trees that have been there for hundreds of years. They are like
monuments.
To drive through the southern half of the Salento is to realize that the hardest-hit areas surround the coastal town of Gallipoli and radiate
southward, toward Racale and then down to the tip of Italy. The bacterium steadily restricts water flow from the roots of a tree to its branches
and leaves. The olives are not affected, but production gradually diminishes as a tree dies.
It is like they have a slow stroke, said Ettore, a local olive producer who would give only his first name because he did not want his company
to be associated with the epidemic. Slowly, it is as if the blood is no longer flowing, and the branches dry out and stop producing olives.
Standing in the middle of a grove, Ettore, 32, and Mr. Manni, the co-op official, nodded toward a tree with a trunk easily 25 feet in
circumference. It is called the Giant of Alliste, and local growers say it is 1,500 years old (a figure scientists say is unlikely). It appears healthy,
except for one branch in which the leaves are reddened and curled, an early sign
that the bacterium has struck.
Mr. Manni reached down into a patch of grass, picking through weeds until he
pinched what appeared to be a glob of spit but was actually the protective casing
for the nymph stage of the spittlebug. The spittlebugs will start flying this month
and have served as a primary vector of the outbreak, chewing on the leaves of
infected trees and then carrying the bacterium to other, healthy trees, like an
unseen wildfire. Scientists say no one yet knows the extent of the outbreak
because some infected trees may not yet be showing symptoms.
Italian officials, whom olive growers have blamed for reacting too slowly, have
divided the affected region into quarantine areas, with the buffer zone extending
across the peninsula. Infected trees and plants were supposed to be cut down in
one of the quarantine areas north of the buffer zone, while growers in the
contaminated region south of the buffer zone were supposed to prune infected
trees and cut surrounding grasses to better control insects.
Maurizio Martina, Italys agriculture minister, said that at most, about 35,000
trees could be uprooted under the government plan of the estimated 11
million olive trees in the area. So far, the ministry said, officials had cut down only six trees, with farmers culling an additional 100 or so. But the
culling numbers could grow far higher assuming the new court ruling is overturned.
Scientists say a buffer zone may be useful but warn that simply cutting down infected trees will not solve the problem in southern Salento. The
only feasible option is coexistence and to create an open sky laboratory in that area, said Donato Boscia, a scientist at Italys National
Research Council.
To some degree, Europe is simply now facing a problem long entrenched in the Americas. One recent study estimated that Pierces disease
a strain of Xylella that affects grapes and vineyards costs California $104 million a year. Farmers in Brazil, which produces about 60 percent
of the global juice supply, face similar problems.
In southern Salento, growers are alarmed but determined to learn how to adapt to the presence of the bacterium. It takes seven years or longer
for a new tree to begin producing olives, and farmers were initially furious at reports that the European Commission wanted to cut down a
million or more trees, and possibly even healthy plants in proximity.
Growers note that about 10 percent of all olive trees in the southern part of the province are infected meaning that about 10 million trees are
still thought to be healthy.
Most of all, olive growers fear that a way of life that has sustained generations could disappear. Already, production is dropping at many farms
in the region. We are scared to go to the fields in the mornings, said Pantaleo Piccinno, a major olive producer who is also president of the
local branch of Coldiretti, one of the countrys largest farm associations. You leave in the afternoon, and everything looks normal. Then you
return in the morning, and you see the first symptoms, he continued. Its going to get much worse.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/12/world/europe/fear-of-ruin-as-disease-takes-hold-of-italys-olive-trees.html?ref=science