Xylella fastidiosa and the Olive Oil Crisis in Puglia

Puglia, the heel of Italy's boot, and not be struck by the seemingly endless groves of olive trees that start north of Bari and extend for hundreds of kilometers to the farthest tip of the Salento peninsula. Olives have defined Puglia for centuries, culturally, socially, and economically. Indeed, it is hard to imagine the Puglian countryside without those stately groves, some with monumental gnarled trunks that date back to the thirteenth century when Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II built the majestic Castel del Monte, which still looks out over the olive groves of northern Puglia. And yet today, those trees, and so Puglian culture and agriculture, face an existential threat in the shape of Xylella fastidiosa, a bacterium carried by the otherwise innocuous spittlebug that is wreaking destruction on the olive groves of southern Puglia while gradually spreading northward. Those historic groves may have to be replaced wholesale with different, more resistant cultivars, or indeed olive growing may be abandoned in large parts of the region altogether. If that comes to pass, it will constitute not just an agricultural shift but a drastic conversion of the Puglian economy, checking the remarkable progress that has been made in Puglian oil production over the past few decades. During spring 2019, I spent a month traveling through Puglia interviewing olive growers and olive oil producers to learn about both the recent history of Puglian oil and how growers are reacting to the Xylella blight and its diffusion. They expressed by turns optimism, enthusiasm, pride, concern, anger, and desperation

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