Italy Approves Aid for Mills Hit by 2018 Snow Storm

The Italian Ministries of Agriculture, Economic Development, and Economy and Finance have pledged €8 mil­lion ($9.3 mil­lion) in grants for Apulian mills impacted by the Burian snow storm of 2018.

The funds will be pro­vided to millers and coop­er­a­tives aff­tected by the frosts between February 26 and March 1, 2018. Also known as the ​‘Beast from the East,’ the mas­sive snow­storm blan­keted vast tracts of Italy in unsea­son­ably late snow.

While low tem­per­a­tures can have a pos­i­tive effect on the devel­op­ment of olive dru­pes, Burian instead caused long-term dam­age to trees with trunks and branches exposed to the north and north­west.

Partially as a result of the storm, Italian olive oil pro­duc­tion dur­ing the 2018/19 crop year fell to 175,000 tons, the low­est fig­ure in 30 years.

In Puglia, which saw its pro­duc­tion fig­ures halved com­pared with the pre­vi­ous sea­son, many millers either did not open their facil­i­ties or shut down ear­lier than usual, suf­fer­ing a drop in rev­enue.

“With the sign­ing of the decree we now move on to the phase of allo­ca­tion of funds,” Italian Agricultural Undersecretary Giuseppe L’Abbate said, adding that he will closely fol­low the evo­lu­tion of the pro­vi­sion.

“Puglia accounts for the eight per­cent of the world’s extra vir­gin olive oil pro­duc­tion,” he said. ​“The frosts that occurred in February and March 2018 have dealt a hard blow to the sec­tor. For this rea­son, in the agri­cul­ture com­mit­tee of the cham­ber of deputies dur­ing the dis­cus­sions on the bill on emer­gen­cies in agri­cul­ture, we stepped up to imple­ment such actions.”

• Ansa