
Olive tree disease across Europe 'could costs billions' - leonagano
https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-52234561
======
mikorym
To put this in perspective, it has happened before along similar lines in
different produce types.

For example, almost all of the vineyards in Europe were wiped out in the 19th
century [1]. This is why the oldest vineyards in the world are somewhere in
South America. (I think Chile?)

Today, as we all know, France is still the most important wine producing
country. South Africa has 100k hectares of wine; France has 100k hectares _of
merlot_.

Yes, people can do more to handle these diseases, but often the simplest way
is with a lot of poison, which many people also don't like. _Tuta absoluta_
wiped out 1/2 of the yearly Egyptian tomato crop few years ago and yet it's
pretty similar to what we call _aartappelmot_ and unfortunately the way to
handle it is with a lot of poison.

By the way, this is why I emphasise that policy is not the main issue in
agriculture. The issue is efficiency and efficacy. For example, I am working
on building a system that improves time of application of pesticides. (Before
getting there, there are some lower hanging fruit to pick.) It's a major
problem for farmers of all sizes as the people selling the pesticides actually
have an incentive to get you to buy more and more. But the key is to apply at
the right stage of the particular pest's life cycle. And as someone who likes
mathematics, it's satisfying work due to the inherent complexity of
agriculture.

[1] I think this is the one we're looking for:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_French_Wine_Blight](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_French_Wine_Blight)

~~~
clows
A minor difference:

> The slow-growing trees take 65 to 80 years to reach stable yields.

[https://www.hunker.com/13428601/how-long-does-it-take-for-
an...](https://www.hunker.com/13428601/how-long-does-it-take-for-an-olive-
tree-to-produce-fruit)

~~~
glaberficken
While factually true, this does not apply at all to how olive trees are farmed
in intensive plantations in the real world.

The typical modern plantation in Spain/Portugal uses very young and small
trees (they start giving fruit by year 4) supported by intensive automated
watering (typically from nearby dam projects) and with the trees spaced out
just right for automated picking.

Like this photo: [https://images.impresa.pt/expresso/2019-09-06-pag16_T-
_IDP.j...](https://images.impresa.pt/expresso/2019-09-06-pag16_T-
_IDP.jpg/original/mw-860)

------
jelliclesfarm
there is some truth to this. same news was posted here on HN last year. but in
reality, there is more to it.

yes, there is a pathogen. but EU olive industry is moving to turkey and
morocco. why? simple. cheap labour. olive trees can live for a very very long
time, but there are two kinds of olives harvested. for oil and then for table
olives. the former has been mechanised and the latter is not. so it's
expensive.

it's cheaper to raze down old olive orchards and just plant new ones. the new
ones can be trellised and have dwarf hybrids or disease resistant varieties.
also cheaper labour if not grown in the EU. i suspect they'd use that ag land
for something else. likely development.

the same thing happened in central california. one of the major buyers for
table olives from EU stopped orders from california. and entire
orchards..thousands and thousands of acres were razed down. they simply moved
their business to morocco and turkey. (inside source. cant confirm or verify,
but i trust this source.)

western countries have this plan to outsource ag to developing nations because
of labour. it is the most dumbass strategy ever. it is not going to be like IT
has been outsourced. it relies on long supply chains by ships entirely
dependent on dirty energy. food security is nothing to be trifled
with(remember venezuela?)..but labour costs in western nations is nothing to
be sneezed at.

automation and robotics is the only solution. as long as VCs dont think of it
as a data play for commodity ag market only , that tech wont trickle down to
food crops. with the current covid crisis, everything will change. everything
has to change. local food networks, food security and shorter tighter supply
chains are going to become necessary. it's time to automate small acreage food
farms and reclassify Ag as essential protected industry.

i also expect this covid crisis to facilitate the biggest wealth transfer and
land grab in the last hundred years. but i am not betting on anything now.
things should get interesting.

i hope that automation in ag at all levels become a reality and the sector
(hopefully along with healthcare) becomes less exploitative. altho' ag
exploits the producers and healthcare exploits the consumers. but that is
likely a different topic.

~~~
mikekchar
There are other solutions. Institute a minimum wage for farm work. Make it
attractive to those who would ordinarily choose to work in a factory to work
at a farm. Break the monopolies on food distribution (probably will require
the companies to be restructured by law). Create a national food distribution
service to compete with the original companies. Provide minimum prices for
farmers with the national food distribution service. Put tarifs on imports.
Remove _all_ subsidies for food exports (and stop trying to bomb the world
food prices in order to offer loans to countries to buy your food exports when
they can't afford to compete with their own home grown products).

Ha ha. But seriously, automation and robotics will be _much_ easier to
implement.

~~~
batushka3
Yes, easier and also it's not building a socialist economy that would end in
just another starvation.

~~~
madaxe_again
You might have missed it, but it’s capitalism that’s grievously mismanaging
this crisis, and everybody suddenly wants a handout. Capitalism when the sun
shines, socialism when it rains.

------
toohotatopic
Funny that they don't explicitly mention the analogy to corona but I guess
that's still their point. I am wondering if this is an intended jab at Italy.
They could have prevented the spread if they had locked down the region where
it was occurring first.

This would have been a perfect moment for the EU to shine and to actually
resolve an issue. If they had removed all olive trees within hundred
kilometers of the original area, the loss of trees would have been huge, but
the impact would have stayed small. Like corona, the original areas didn't
profit from the loss of their trees so they had no incentive to cut them down.
With EU funding, the incentive could have been provided.

Similarly, it would have been relatively easy to contain the box tree moth [1]
if the first areas had cut down all box trees. They haven't, and now it is a
global problem.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cydalima_perspectalis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cydalima_perspectalis)

------
ggm
Australia has an olive industry. Its small, far smaller than the scale of this
problem, but we do, and we make some really good robust EVO.

I don't wish this disease on the countries exposed to it, but I do hope we can
negotiate better prices for our olive oil and related products selling into
Europe and the world.

We're also (at least in principle, but there are holes) builders of strong
biosecurity boundaries. I'd hope we can avoid this disease for a while until
mitigation is worked out. We didn't escape the banana diseases. That was bad
:-(

~~~
emmelaich
Sort of related; Australia has the oldest grape vines.

France's (and California's?) were wiped out by a pest.

[https://www.foodandwine.com/lifestyle/how-drink-wine-
worlds-...](https://www.foodandwine.com/lifestyle/how-drink-wine-worlds-
oldest-vines)

~~~
contingencies
Yunnan in China also protected grapes over that period which were planted by
French Jesuit missionaries in the 19th century.[0][1] "Somewhere in South
America" was mentioned elsewhere in this thread: I suspect there are more
locations. Basically, without actually reading any sources, my impression is
that the event was severe but its totality was overstated.

[0] [https://www.gokunming.com/en/blog/item/3943/new-gods-for-
fro...](https://www.gokunming.com/en/blog/item/3943/new-gods-for-frontier-
people-missionaries-in-northwest-yunnan) [1]
[https://supchina.com/2019/07/23/grapes-of-god-smitten-the-
tr...](https://supchina.com/2019/07/23/grapes-of-god-smitten-the-
transformation-of-cizhong-yunnan/)

------
glofish
billions in losses used to sound like a big number, ah the good old days

------
extro
Possibly related [https://greekcitytimes.com/2020/04/07/an-attack-on-greek-
her...](https://greekcitytimes.com/2020/04/07/an-attack-on-greek-heritage-
migrants-chop-thousands-of-olive-trees-on-lesvos/)

------
bsder
Maximally efficient is minimally robust.

~~~
pacamara619
This is so obviously false. Counterexample: Robusta Coffee.

~~~
mrpopo
Why do you say it is obvious? Monocultures were selected at a specific point
in time for their properties, which may include robustness, but it doesn't
change the fact that they are basically giant colonies of clones.

Real long-term robustness in nature comes from genetic diversity, which
ensures future pathogens with a particular affinity will not be able to thrive
through entire countries/continents.

~~~
CMCDragonkai
That also applies to people right?

~~~
Danieru
Do you have some cloning technology we are not aware of? A mono-culture of
genetically identical human clones is sci-fi.

------
supernova87a
See what happens when trees don't obey social distancing rules!

------
pvaldes
Had created ( _yet_ ) damages by billions since 2013 is the correct term.

Olive Ebola is not a new disease at all. Another case of "as seen in Italy".

------
emmelaich
`cost` not `costs`; per the actual headline.

------
mister_hn
this is going on since 3-4 years already but no intervention has really taken
place.

In South of Italy the trees are being removed, but a truly intervention hasn't
been deployed.

------
harikb
People will close the article as soon as they read “50 years”. Sometimes
science needs to lie a little bit for a cause

~~~
barry-cotter
And that’s how you burn all trust, like with the WHO lying about masks, human
to human transmission of COVID and the effectiveness of border controls. If
they’ll lie for the cause and you know it why trust that third is not one of
those times?

~~~
harikb
I understand what you are saying. I wish there was a aolution though. Nobody
care about anything 5+ years down the road. Everyone magically assumes some
magic invention will undo years of ignoring science. Anyways, in this
particular case, it is probably not preventable, but I wish we could quantify
the effect closer to a year or two.

~~~
mschuster91
_Current politicians_ don't care about anything 5+ years in the future. The
youth very well does, see e.g. Fridays for future movement.

We need a maximum age for politicians, and mandate ethnic, gender and age
diversity in politics. Additionally we have to incentivize long-term thinking
and disincentivize short term optimization. As long as we are in capitalism,
an idea would be a 2 million dollar bonus to be paid out 20 years after a
politician retires - which is only valid if the decisions this politician took
during their time in office had a quantifiably positive impact for general
society.

~~~
barry-cotter
> We need a maximum age for politicians, and mandate ethnic, gender and age
> diversity in politics.

This is a terrible idea. If you can’t vote the power structure will just abuse
you without thinking. See the total lack of freedom and respect for children,
non-citizens, whether visitors or residents, permanent or temporary, and for
felons deprived of a vote. Relying on people being good because it’s nice
works much worse than relying on them not harming you because it will have
consequences.

If you want a representative pool of politicians mandating “diversity” is the
wrong way to do it. Use sortition. Draft legislators in much the same way
jurors are compelled to serve. I would not want to have this be the only way
legislators are chosen because a legislature with an average IQ of 100 where
most people had not graduated college does not seem likely to be full of the
highly competent. I’d support one chamber chosen this way and another elected
though. Competence isn’t the only valuable thing.

