
Italy’s olive crisis intensifies as deadly tree disease spreads - paganel
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-07389-8
======
chicob
I'm an olive and almond producer in Portugal.

In preparation for this very serious issue, since that the only thing I can do
is to minimize the risk of infection, I tell all personnel to spray bleach on
trimming scissors for each tree, the case of high density orchards, and for
every 10-15 trees (or each row) in super high density orchards.

I also try to monitor for infection vectors like Cicadellidae, and for
possible ill trees in the vicinities.

I will report any suspect case to the authorities, be it my neighbours' or my
own.

I am also looking for affordable insurance that covers this kind of problem.

Also related to new agricultural issues arising from globalisation and worthy
of attention are the zebra mussel (Dreissena polymorpha), the water hyacinth
(Eichhornia ssp.), and the Asian clam (Corbicula fluminea) that obstruct
irrigation pipes.

~~~
jimbokun
I'm curious, what brought you to Hacker News?

It's fascinating the variety of people who contribute here, and I'm wondering
what would bring a Portuguese farmer to a site centered around technology and
entrepreneurship.

(I suppose I could equally ask why this site would be discussing a bacterial
outbreak in Italian olive trees, and the answer could be "because it's
interesting" to both questions.)

~~~
chicob
I really like Hacker News, and I usually read my tech-related news here first.
Farming is kind of the family business, and I love it.

I am also a physicist by training, and thus my interest in technology in
general. Agriculture is becoming increasingly technological, and everything
from farming gadgets to John Deere tractors hacking has come up many times.
There are even some Plasma Physics applications to agriculture, so the
interdisciplinarity never ends!

The "because it's interesting" is also an accurate answer!

~~~
vanderZwan
> _There are even some Plasma Physics applications to agriculture, so the
> interdisciplinarity never ends!_

You can't just casually mention this without further explanation! :D

~~~
chicob
Here it is:

[http://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-
talk/energy/environment/a-blas...](http://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-
talk/energy/environment/a-blast-of-plasma-makes-plants-grow-faster)

~~~
vanderZwan
Thanks, finally got around to reading it!

> _In explaining the results, Koga says that the plasma treatment speeds up
> the cell cycle so that the plant and seeds grow faster overall, with
> reactive oxygen species playing a key role in the effects._

Very cool! :)

> _Nevertheless, Edward Bormashenko, professor of chemical engineering and
> biotechnology at Ariel University in Israel, says the situation was “more
> complicated than these results might indicate.” Pointing to his own team’s
> plasma research using seeds of lentils, beans, and wheat, he says: “There is
> no general approach available yet that can be applied to different kinds of
> seeds. Much depends on the types of seeds used, the conditions under which
> they geminate, and other factors.”_

That is really cool, but I immediately have a follow-up question: given that
plants also rely on a healthy soil ecosystem, which means symbiotic bacteria,
and that this plasma treatment definitely will kill any trace bacteria on the
skins of these cells, has it been explored if this has any effect?

Kind of like how you read all these stories of how the increase in C-sections
results in a loss of transfer of healthy symbiotic bacteria from the mother to
the child.

------
josario
I'm Italian and I come from Puglia. It strikes me directly. It's a hard punch
in the stomach, problem is that people don't want to remove this old trees,
they are even centuries old and so they make the disease spread more and more
as time progress and as a matter of fact the olive oil selling is their only
income. The state failed, they had no direct order to remove the trees nor
economical help. As an example in my father field where we grow olive oil
trees, there are few that has this disease, but my father hasn't removed them,
it's a cost we can't afford. Now put a lot of ignorant agriculturist old men
without money that have has the only source of income selling olive oil in
front of this disease and you get the results.

~~~
inferiorhuman
While at the grocery store yesterday I noticed that the store had a few
shelves of cutting boards and bowls made of olive wood. They're made from non-
producing olive trees in Tunisia. The little blurb on the cutting board
suggested that the Tunisians cut down the trees once they stop producing.

I wonder if there's enough of a market that producing wood would incentivize
cutting down infected trees. The grain is visually very distinctive and
appealing and the items themselves weren't particularly cheap.

~~~
josario
No, because the infected trees wood is crap and falls apart, it can't be used
to make wood items or wooden stuff sadly :( And yes, the tree wood of healthy
plants is amazing.

~~~
inferiorhuman
Oh that's a shame. On the other hand it's likely that olive growers can adapt
(although this means that traditions will change). We've done it with bananas,
and, to some extent, citrus.

------
vanderZwan
People outside of Italy are probably not aware of how seriously they take the
topic of olive oil over there. The label _" extra vergine"_ increases the
price so much that there is a huge economic incentive for fraud. To combat
this they have a taste police (literally) that checks that olive oil samples
are not secretly mixes of fresh and old oil together. They are... quite
opinionated, as you can see this exchange from when a Dutch journalist came to
visit them and asked their opinion on the (supposedly) extra virgin that was
sold in the Netherlands[0].

Taster: _" This eh... oil is eh... very particular (...) It's Spanish!"_

Journalist: _" It's Spanish? I wouldn't know."_

T: _" Hah, now you know! This smell is very characteristic of Spanish olive
oil."_

J: _" But this is not a defect, is it?"_

T: _" Yes."_

J: _" It's defective?"_

T: _" Yes."_

J: _" Because it's Spanish?"_

Other taster: _" For Italian people, yes."_

A few minutes later[1], the boss comes with a more diplomatic answer:

 _" That the olive oil is Spanish is not a defect per sé, but within our
guidelines we do consider it a defective product, because our own oil has a
very specific smell and flavour. It's a fine product for Spain, but not for
us."_

EDIT: for the Europeans: the same program also revealed that Carbonell and
Bertolli are the same Spanish company with a different label, with pretty much
the same (mostly) Spanish olive oil. In case you care about that sort of
thing. Personally I'm kind of curious how Greek olive oil fits in this
picture.

[0]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jkO1dwx2_KA&t=16m](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jkO1dwx2_KA&t=16m)

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jkO1dwx2_KA&t=19m26s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jkO1dwx2_KA&t=19m26s)

~~~
btilly
To that I'd suggest reading [https://lifehacker.com/the-most-and-least-fake-
extra-virgin-...](https://lifehacker.com/the-most-and-least-fake-extra-virgin-
olive-oil-brands-1460894373). Since then I've bought California olive oil and
giggled at all of the Italian brands.

About the article, my honest first thought was, "Does it matter? They already
weren't selling olive oil in the first place, now they just have to pretend
harder."

~~~
airstrike
"You might raise your eyebrows at the conclusion that Australian and
California extra virgin olive oils are purer than most Italian olive oils,
since the research was partially funded by the California Olive Ranch and the
California Olive Oil Council and has ties with the Australian Olive
Association"

~~~
vanderZwan
Well, most Italian olive oils _sold in California_. I think that makes it a
lot less surprising. The regulations of the oil fraud police of Italy only
apply to Italy, after all.

~~~
toyg
Also of note that Italian companies tend to sell their best food at home,
where competition is fiercer and taste is more discerning. The exported stuff
is traditionally weaker, because foreign markets are less picky.

------
nicodds
Hello people! A voice from the field here.

As in most of the cases in Italy, we can say that the approach is: "the
situation is hopeless, but not serious". Apart from the joke, it is a sad
period and the Xylella case is just part of a bigger whole. But let's stay
focused.

Actually, the problem has a long history and Nature wrote about it several
times over the last 5 years.

I'm not an expert, nor a practitioner of the field. Nevertheless, it seems a
growing evidence show that the bacterium is responsible for the problem
together with a state of abandon, spread over many areas of the region,
uncultivated from several decades.

The local court started an investigation to understand how Xylella reached the
Salento area. Due to a poor scientific approach and an uneffective
communication, such investigations gave rise to very large protests among
public opinion. These protests blocked de facto any political decision to stop
the spreading of the bacterium: politicians are more interested in their
consensus.

This lead to a paralysis status in which Xylella prospered and the infection
spread over, towards southern areas of Brindisi province.

Meanwhile, the investigations did not find a clear responsible. There are two
main voices in this side. The first says that Xylella infection was the result
of an out of hand scientific experiment aimed at testing some plant protection
products. The second says that Xylella comes from massive and uncontrolled
import-export activities in a big plants trading facility. Both stories have a
similar geographical origin, near the city of Gallipoli.

HTH, Nico

------
xbryanx
Italy has a messy history listening to and even jailing its scientists, as
they go about the normal process of empiricism.
[https://www.nature.com/news/italian-seismologists-cleared-
of...](https://www.nature.com/news/italian-seismologists-cleared-of-
manslaughter-1.16313)

~~~
syn0byte
"Bertolaso said he was sending the scientists to L’Aquila to carry out “a
media operation” in order to “shut up any imbecile,” most likely a reference
to Gioacchino Giuliani, a technician at the nearby Gran Sasso physics
laboratory who had reportedly raised a series of alarms about impending strong
quakes in the weeks beforehand."

Scientists, acting in a public service context, charged with negligence after
a natural disaster they dismissed as unlikely resulted in 300+ deaths. That
isn't the same as putting scientists on trail for reporting factual but
inconvenient data. All their sentences were overturned as well.

[https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/10/seven-year-legal-
sag...](https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/10/seven-year-legal-saga-ends-
italian-official-cleared-manslaughter-earthquake-trial)

~~~
pif
> they dismissed as unlikely

They didn't dismiss it! They only stated that imbecile Gioacchino Giuliani was
talking out of nothing and people had better to ignore him.

Earthquakes cannot yet be foreseen with an adequate precision. Fullstop.

After the fact, judges were clearly overwhelmed with emotions when they forced
themselves to read a mere pseudo-coincidence as an unknown genius researcher
being silenced by the corrupt scientific elite. The judgement was overthrown
in appeal, and the appeal outcome validated by supreme court, with the
staement: _il fatto non sussiste_ (there is no case).

------
chmaynard
This looks like an opinion piece disguised as objective reporting. There's
just enough factual information to make it seem credible but the author is
clearly taking sides. For example, the article characterizes people with
environmental concerns as "anti-science" yet there's no evidence presented to
support this point of view.

~~~
paganel
It does sound a little subjective but then the following seems like it really
happened, which definitely looks like being anti-science:

> In June, some parliamentarians formally deposited documents at the Senate,
> one of Italy’s two houses of parliament, which﻿ challenged the scientific
> evidence on which Xylella management plans have been based and called for a
> Senate inquiry into whether scientists have misled the public. These claims
> were repudiated the following month, in an independent analysis commissioned
> by the national science academy, the Accademia dei Lincei. The Senate has
> not yet acted on the call for an inquiry.

~~~
beaconstudios
that action isn't intrinsically anti-science. It depends on the objection that
the counterparty has raised - if their objections are legitimate or just based
in conspiracy. If the results cannot be defended without resorting to an
appeal to authority then that is more anti-science than challenging the work
itself.

~~~
paganel
> If the results cannot be defended without resorting to an appeal to
> authority then that is more anti-science than challenging the work itself.

I think trusting "an independent analysis commissioned by the national science
academy" compared to a political action initiated by a few politicians is not
"an appeal to authority", quite the contrary. At some point we do have to
trust some people who are better prepared and informed than us on a
particularly given subject. Especially in the Italian political and social
context, where some other scientists have been recently prosecuted for
"failing" to predict earthquakes.

~~~
beaconstudios
to be clear, I was addressing the original complaint, not the response to the
independent analysis. If your allegations are addressed by an independent
third party and you continue to reject the outcome, then it's pretty clearly
conspiracy-based.

------
mlrtime
I was pretty shocked to learn that most (~80%) of the Italian extra virgin
olive oil that comes into the US is neither Italian or olive oil.

[https://www.cbsnews.com/news/60-minutes-overtime-how-to-
buy-...](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/60-minutes-overtime-how-to-buy-olive-
oil/)

~~~
YeGoblynQueenne
It is olive oil- it's just not extra virgin olive oil, produced by olive flesh
(i.e. not the seeds) and only by mechanical extraction (i.e. no heat or
chemical processing). The fraud is in the fact that it is advertised as extra
virgin, the highest recognised quality, when it's not.

Also, it is Italian, only not purely so. It is often mixed in with oils from
other places. The problem is when the mix-ins are from North Africa, e.g. from
Morocco, which are considered of inferior quality than the South European
oils. Nobody would really mind if Italian oils were mixed in with Spanish or
Greek oils, which are considered superior.

~~~
Cyph0n
> The problem is when the mix-ins are from North Africa, e.g. from Morocco,
> which are considered of inferior quality

Tunisian here. I'm curious: why is North African olive oil considered
inferior?

~~~
zozbot123
Racism, mainly. They say the same thing about Turkish hazelnuts while failing
to acknowledge that Turkey is the homeland of hazelnuts and way way older than
Italian ones.

~~~
reaperducer
_Turkey is the homeland of hazelnuts and way way older than Italian ones._

Older !== better. See also: California wine.

------
scalio
I recently read Biodiversos by Stefano Mancuso and Carlo Petrini, the founder
of the slow food movement. It's basically a discussion between the two where
they lay out the big problems with our production and consumption of food.

For instance, concentrating on making single kinds as productive as possible
instead of cultivating variety is extremely dangerous, as shown by this event.
The great Irish famine is maybe the most striking example. Humanity does
exactly that with wheat, cows, almost everything. The very basis of most of
the globe's food comes from a handful of species. In my mind, this is one of
the great ticking bombs of our close future.

~~~
Retric
I don’t know about dangerous.

We have a wide range of crops and the loss of a single one is only ever a
regional problem. The loss of any one crop be that something minor like
strawberries or major like corn is just not that big a deal globally.

Now locally yea it can be a huge issue, but the tradeoff of lower productivity
every year vs the low odds in any one year of a problem make this fairly
complex balancing act.

~~~
Moru
Google Banana fungus. We don't have a wide range of crops. We have monoculture
and a very small set of GMO crops that is used all over the world. For example
there is a lot of different rice species but we eat mabe five of them in
western countries.

~~~
Retric
Let’s assume the worldwide Banana outpdrops to zero in one day. That’s bad,
but not what I would call dangerous.

In terms of the food supply, their are several major food crops that are
important wheat, corn, rice, soy etc so the loss of a major one would be very
bad, but the worldwide food surplus is so mind blowingly vast it would not
nessisarily result in starvation for anyone beyond possibly the farmers
directly affected in the 3rd world.

And frankly next year you can generally plant something else.

------
mark-r
Aggressive destruction of plants that are believed to be infected without
actual signs of infection is a bad idea. You may destroy plants that have a
natural immunity. Keeping those plants may be the only hope for a long-term
solution.

------
izietto
Hey! The region where I live is on HN homepage.

I wonder if this plague is somehow related to the fact that Puglia ecosystem
has been subverted in the last 50 years by heavy pesticide usage and intensive
agriculture.

------
eecc
Olive groves from Puglia are about a couple centuries old, and were originally
meant to produce low grade oil for lamps.

Furthermore, at that time picking was a painstaking manual process but labor
was cheap. So these trees were let to grow naturally, making it impossible to
use mechanized picking today.

Overall it would be better to setup a replantation program to allow for modern
and cost-effective management. I have little hope it will ever happen.

------
pif
> Italy declared a state of emergency over the crisis in 2015. But quarantine
> efforts — which can involve uprooting beloved, ancient trees — have been
> opposed by environmentalists and some farmers,

That's always the problem with stupid environmentalists (as opposed to smart
environmentalists): they can only say no, but they never propose an
alternative solutions to the actual issue.

------
andrenotgiant
Olive Wood is really beautiful and expensive, I wonder if this will drive a
decrease in the price of it.

In the US there is a special variety of pine killed by Mountain Pine Beetles
that is relatively cheap but liked by woodworkers because the fungus that
kills it leaves interesting blue streaks :
[https://www.sustainablelumberco.com/2015/03/beetle-kill-
pine...](https://www.sustainablelumberco.com/2015/03/beetle-kill-pine-qa/)

~~~
AdmiralAsshat
Reminds me of the burl:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burl](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burl)

It's basically a kind of cancer inside the tree, but it's highly prized
because it looks pretty.

~~~
hinkley
Spalted maple is a fungal decay, halted before the wood becomes too unstable
to work.

------
anon2775
Also, Europe is desertifying like crazy due to climate change. Spanish farmers
can't get the irrigation water they need, and have to go out of business or
move in order to open greehouse farms in other actual desert areas. It's
horrible because the planet is becoming so inhospitable that a nearly global
desert is what we have to look forward to, if not Venus.

------
woliveirajr
In Brazil, there is some interesting story about how Cacau trees were
contaminated with a plague called "vassoura de bruxa" (Crinipellis
perniciosa). Many trees were found with some contaminated branches tied to
them.

In portuguese there are some news (ex.:
[http://atarde.uol.com.br/bahia/salvador/noticias/1257586-ent...](http://atarde.uol.com.br/bahia/salvador/noticias/1257586-entenda-
o-caso-da-vassoura-de-bruxa)) considering that it was some kind of
bioterrorism.

------
sifoobar
From my understanding there are two ways this happens. 1) We mess with plant
genetics, which creates weak mono cultures. Bananas being the biggest offender
I'm familiar with. And 2) We play God and release our lovely designer
creatures into the environment to marvel at the unintended consequences.

This one hits me where it hurts though, I wouldn't get through a day without
good olive oil.

------
adreamingsoul
I also see a third option, let nature run its course.

Yes, that means we will reduce the supply of Olive oil. But, if they follow
through with the quarantine practices, it will destroy hundreds of years of
root growth, diversity, and soil health.

Why do humans think they can stop the force of nature? We only make it worse
for ourselves when we attempt to "control" nature.

/endrant

------
dt_rsp
I remember reading this some years back, about horizontal resistance rather
than vertical resistance.

[http://sharebooks.com/system/files/Return-to-
Resistance.pdf](http://sharebooks.com/system/files/Return-to-Resistance.pdf)

I was unable to find a whole lot more information on the subject at the time.

------
igivanov
It's sad for producers of genuine olive oil but as a rather indifferent
consumer I always remember that olive oil, honey and I forget what else are
the most falsified food products in the world. I would guess that the market
of "extra virgin olive oil" will remain, cough, healthy.

------
amelius
> If found guilty, Italy could, for example, lose access to important
> agricultural subsidies.

That will help ...

------
pvaldes
It seems that Italy has a problem checking imported alive plants. Is not
exclusive from Italy, Spain also has issues, and France, but it seem that it
happens a lot there for some reason.

Is the Olive, and the Chestnut also, and other crops...

------
b1r6
It's quite unfortunate, but the eventual solution is resistance. Plants have
immune responses too? If they are all extremely similar genetically, that is
the actual problem.

------
commentor10
Is it time to hoard good olive oil?

~~~
cataphract
Olive oil is a fresh product that needs to be consumed within a relatively
short time span (preferably within a year or so) — after that it starts
getting rancid. So this is not really an option.

~~~
ams6110
What if you keep it frozen?

~~~
bluGill
The year assumes frozen. Keep it at room temperature and you get just a couple
months.

Of course few people (outside of the Mediterranean) have had good fresh olive
oil and wouldn't know the difference.

------
amelius
Q: are olive trees a monoculture like bananas?

~~~
Arnt
That word does not mean what you think it does ;)

No, they're not. They can be grown in a monoculture (a large area occupied by
the same plant), but they're not clones like bananas.

They are, however, slow. What you plant today doesn't give you olives any time
soon.

~~~
usrusr
> They are, however, slow. What you plant today doesn't give you olives any
> time soon.

That's why news like this terrify me so much. Even deadly human diseases seem
depressingly harmless by comparison, given the relative ease with which we can
be replaced, relative to a very old tree. Thinking of humans as replaceable
feels awful.

------
PHGamer
hah sometimes environmentalists really are too crazy.

------
notacode
im italian, and the problem it's not disease but bad weather

------
choot
I wonder if such bacteria can be designed in a lab.

And then used to attack developing countries massive agricultural production.

Let's say, china and india are growing export regions.

And if American or Russian companies design a specific bacteria to target
their major agricultural exports then the prices will go up due to falling
supply.

So is this possible? Could this be happening somewhere in the world?

~~~
folli
It's probably easier to screen for existing bacterial strains that do such a
job, instead of designing them.

~~~
Bud
Yes. About a billion times easier. Just send a few tourists in who are
contaminated.

------
coldcode
The easiest way to ensure that people listen is to do nothing and let all the
olive trees in Italy die. I presume at that point people will pay attention.

~~~
gpderetta
They will not, they will just find a convenient scapegoat.

~~~
qubex
Immigrants! Leaders of other EU countries telling their banks to dump our
bonds and cause the ‘spread’ to levitate. Et cetera.

