‘Olive tree leprosy’ | New bacterial disease leaves Italian farmers with only a fraction of their normal harvest
ROME, Italy (Reuters) — Italian olive growers are increasing the price of olive oil as a bacterial disease, a fruit fly blight and unusually wet weather reduce harvests by one-third.
This year’s harvest is expected to be down by more than 35 percent from last year’s level, forcing prices up by 30 percent, according to the olive oil trade associations Assitol and Federolio.
Italian oil production, which the farmers’ association Coldiretti said is usually worth around $2.8 billion a year, was hit in some areas by the xylella fastidiosa pathogen, described as “olive tree leprosy” by the associations.
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Francesco Suatoni, who tends 1,000 olive trees near the town of Amelia north of Rome, said he usually makes 40,000 litres of organic olive oil but this year expected to produce only 10,000 litres.
“We started out with sick plants,” Suatoni said.
“Then the warm, wet weather allowed the flies to breed and attack. My grandfather started working here in 1949. We have been here for generations, but none of us has ever seen anything like this.”
Suatoni has raised the price of his oil to $12.70 a litre from $9.90. Assitol and Federolio say market prices have risen at a similar rate across Italy.
The European Food Safety Authority said last November that xylella fastidiosa had been detected in southern Italy, the first outbreak of its kind in the European Union. The bacteria can dry out trees and scorch their leaves.
Italy is already the world’s biggest importer of olive oil, but the drastic reduction in this year’s harvest has pushed imports up by 45 percent from last year, raising the risk that oil grown elsewhere could be passed off as Italian, Coldiretti said.
“Two out of three bottles filled in Italy contain foreign olive oil, and we need to do all we can to ensure transparency in trade and combat the risk of fraud,” Coldiretti said.
Producers and merchants are waiting uneasily to gauge the effect of higher prices on demand.
Italian shoppers traditionally favour high-quality, locally produced food, but consumer spending has dwindled in line with a shrinking economy in the last three years.
“It is difficult to predict what will happen next, because we need to see how consumers respond when these price rises reach the shop shelves,” Assitol and Federolio said in a joint response to questions from Reuters.
