Olive oil is getting more expensive — and these Italian farmers can tell you why
CBC
On a warm, blustery December afternoon outside the De Laurentis olive oil-producing co-op in the white hilltop town of Ostuni, Puglia, Luigi D'Amico holds out his palm, revealing an olive picked earlier in the day.
Instead of resembling the plump, gleaming green and black fruit overflowing in bins around him, this one is half-consumed, dry and shrunken.
"That's what the olive fly does," he explained. "It lays its larvae, which then devours the olive."
D'Amico lists off other pests and fungi — olive leprosy, peacock's eye fungus, the Margaronia moth — all spreading, he says, with the aid of the warm scirocco wind that didn't use to blow here in December, but with climate change, now does.
"We need cold weather to kill off pests," he said. "And temperatures are rising."
Italian olive tree growers aren't the only ones facing challenges. Spain, which produces about 40 per cent of the world's olive oil, has had a drought for two years, and along with Greece is facing wildfires, floods and warmer winters.
These factors have pushed up the average price of olive oil in Canada from $7.75 two years ago to almost $13 now, according to Statistics Canada.
Puglia, the heel of Italy's boot, is responsible for nearly half of Italy's olive oil and almost 15 per cent of worldwide production, and global warming has put it at particular risk.
Along with climate change, its olive trees are being devastated by a bacteria known as Xylella fastidiosa — or "bothersome" Xylella.
The bacteria arrived a decade ago in southern Puglia, likely in a coffee plant imported from Costa Rica, and quickly began its deadly spread up the boot.
A populist regional government, under public pressure, chose denial over the advice of scientists to immediately eradicate infected trees to halt the bacteria's spread. Instead, politicians lent credence to conspiracy theorists who spread fake news — like that the directives to chop down infected trees were the plot of enemies of Italy's olive oil industry. Precious time was lost.
A short drive away along the Adriatic coast brings us to the land of ulivi monumentali — centuries-old olive trees the size of dinosaurs.
Luigi D'Amico walks through his family grove, stopping to admire a massive trunk, carved by time into a majestic sculpture.
"Each and every olive tree here has its own history," he said. "You can look at the trunk and see everything it's been through — all the diseases and more."
