Italy Earmarks  €100 Million to Upgrade Its Olive Mills

The Italian gov­ern­ment has approved a finan­cial pack­age of €100 mil­lion to upgrade the infra­struc­ture of more than 4,000 mills in the coun­try.

In its announce­ment, the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Forestry said the funds would be used for exist­ing mills whose machin­ery and tech­nol­ogy can be upgraded to be more envi­ron­men­tally friendly.

The min­istry will use some of the funds to help mills develop projects to re-use oper­at­ing waste for energy pro­duc­tion, install clean energy sources and upgrade mills with the lat­est tech­nol­ogy to improve olive oil qual­ity.

The new funds are part of a broader Agriculture 4.0 ini­tia­tive, which will see €400 mil­lion invested into the sec­tor by 2023. Agriculture 4.0 involves imple­ment­ing pre­ci­sion agri­cul­tural tech­nolo­gies around the coun­try, includ­ing more dig­i­tal­iza­tion and tar­geted irri­ga­tion, fer­til­iza­tion and pes­ti­cide appli­ca­tion.

According to olive farm­ers and millers, the new funds are urgently needed by a sec­tor shaken in recent years by the con­se­quences of a rapidly chang­ing inter­na­tional mar­ket, the con­tin­ued spread of Xylella fas­tidiosa, extreme weather events and a trend of low­er­ing yields in the coun­try.

Savino Muraglia, pres­i­dent of the Apulian branch of the farm­ing asso­ci­a­tion Coldiretti, said the new ini­tia­tive ​“is an oppor­tu­nity for a cru­cial sec­tor of the olive oil prod­uct chain whose value exceeds €3 bil­lion as an indus­try.”

Coldiretti said the funds would reach a sec­tor expe­ri­enc­ing ris­ing pro­duc­tion costs due to the grow­ing prices of energy, fer­til­izer and con­tain­ers, among oth­ers.

Puglia, home to 893 olive oil millers, is Italy’s largest olive oil-pro­duc­ing region. According to Coldiretti, 25 per­cent of farm­land in the area is used for olive grow­ing. In addi­tion, Puglia is home to almost one-third of all Italian olive groves.

The asso­ci­a­tion added how more than 100 millers in Puglia did not oper­ate a sin­gle day in the last five years, with many sell­ing their equip­ment abroad in the wake of the spread of Xylella fas­tidiosa.

According to the min­istry, the regional author­i­ties will define the spe­cific pro­ce­dures for olive oil millers to access the new funds in the com­ing months.

• Italian Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Forestry
• Italian Network
• Fasi