Coming Off a Strong Year, Growers Ready for Harvest in Italy

The season now ending was characterized by an upward trend in terms of volume. Now, Italian farmers are looking at the next harvest and its climatic challenges.

Giorgio Tonti
By Ylenia Granitto
Sep. 7, 2018 10:19 UTC
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Giorgio Tonti

The lat­est report by the Italian insti­tute ISMEA says Italy’s olive oil pro­duc­tion in the 2017/2018 sea­son reached 429,000 tons — a 135 per­cent increase over the prior year (182,000 tons).

Italy has seen major increases in south­ern regions, start­ing with Puglia which exceeded the thresh­old of 200,000 tons, while Sicily and Calabria returned to nor­mal lev­els of pro­duc­tion. The same goes for Abruzzo, while other areas of cen­tral Italy suf­fered most from the effects of extreme weather con­di­tions. Meanwhile, qual­ity has remained at the high­est level, as proven by count­less recog­ni­tions obtained by the grow­ers across the Boot.
See Also:This Year’s Best Olive Oils from Italy
Never able to rest on their lau­rels, farm­ers are now look­ing ahead to the upcom­ing har­vest. They are aware of the nat­ural ten­dency of olive trees for alter­nate bear­ing, com­bined with the con­se­quences of win­ter frosts.

They’re look­ing to limit the onset of pest infes­ta­tions such as the olive fruit fly and olive moth, and fun­gal dis­eases like olive pea­cock spot and anthrac­nose, favored by humid cli­mate and drop­ping tem­per­a­tures.

Even so, thanks to a con­stant mon­i­tor­ing of olive groves we pre­vented the attack of the fly,” affirmed Angela Fiore, who man­ages Olio Infiore with her brother Tommaso. We are now in the final phase of a great sea­son, dur­ing which still a proper man­age­ment of water scarcity-related issues played a key role,” the pro­ducer from Puglia revealed.

The con­di­tion of their nine hun­dred plants of Coratina spread over the ter­ri­to­ries of Terlizzi and Bitonto, on the north side of Bari, pro­vides hope for another good har­vest, albeit a more com­plex one.

A slight decrease in pro­duc­tion could be caused by the effects of two years of extreme cold in a sec­tor of the orchard, where the farm­ers are still work­ing to recover the harmed plants.

Tommaso Fiore

Despite this year’s cold snap had a shorter dura­tion than the last, night­time tem­per­a­tures affected some olive trees, break­ing the wood or burn­ing the top of canopies,” Fiore observed. In the lat­ter case, how­ever, olive trees got bet­ter quickly, and for­tu­nately other plants affected by the bad weather of last sea­son fully recov­ered.”

In par­tic­u­lar, in the most suf­fer­ing olive grove, olive trees were so asphyx­i­ated and des­ic­cated, we thought about get­ting rid of them. But in the end, thanks to a great team­work, we were able to save the plants which are flour­ish­ing and healthy again. When you res­cue an olive tree that seemed doomed, you feel an inde­scrib­able feel­ing of joy,” she added.

Fiore allowed her­self only a few days of vaca­tion because she has a close rela­tion­ship with her olive trees. As they are con­vert­ing to organic farm­ing with timely actions with allowed treat­ments and traps against the olive fruit fly, they move con­fi­dently towards the next har­vest.

At Colle Nobile, last sea­son was fair in terms of quan­tity, and qual­i­ta­tively excel­lent, thanks to the con­stant com­mit­ment of Giorgio Tonti, who man­ages 1,600 trees on the hills of the Marche region. In the lands of Jesi and San Marcello, he pro­duces five mono­va­ri­etals from the autochtho­nous cul­ti­vars Raggia, Mignola, and Rosciola dei Colli Esini, and the more wide­spread Frantoio and Leccino.

Sometimes extreme tem­per­a­tures helped us, as it was the case with the [the olive fruit fly], whose devel­op­ment last sum­mer was com­pletely blocked by the heat,” Tonti noted. Basically, the sea­son went well, while this year we might have a small decrease in vol­umes, as part of our olive trees suf­fered from the low tem­per­a­tures reg­is­tered in February.”

Giorgio Tonti

The Frantoio and Raggia were affected more than the oth­ers on Tonti’s farm, and he had to per­form a dras­tic prun­ing of some plants. Mignola, which gen­er­ally has a good frost resis­tance, also had prob­lems but to a lesser extent, while Rosciola dei Colli Esini responded very well, and this seems to be a high-yield year for this cul­ti­var, which hope­fully will give us a great har­vest together with Leccino.”

Tonti said researchers have shown an inter­est in fur­ther inves­ti­gat­ing the vari­eties con­sid­ered more resis­tant to cold tem­per­a­tures.

As for the olive fruit fly, he already noticed a neg­li­gi­ble pres­ence due to weather con­di­tions. As soon as we find any ovipo­si­tion or more catches in the traps, we are ready to use appro­pri­ate organic prod­ucts.”

Highlighting the impor­tance of a sus­tain­able approach to high-qual­ity olive grow­ing, the farmer con­cluded, our extra vir­gin olive oil with its unique organolep­tic char­ac­ter­is­tics, is the healthy result of agri­cul­ture in bal­ance with nature.”


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