Thousands of Hectares of Abandoned Olive Groves Set to Be Sold in Italy

Twenty thou­sand hectares of unused and aban­doned farm­land and olive groves have been put on sale in Italy by the Institute of Services for the Agricultural and Food Market (Ismea)

The sixth edi­tion of Ismea’s National Bank of the Agricultural Lands (BTA) auc­tion lists avail­able farms across the coun­try. According to Ismea, the land on sale, enough to estab­lish 800 farms, is worth €260 mil­lion.

Of the avail­able farm­land, 315 lots are exclu­sively olive groves in south­ern Italy. However, plenty of other lots, includ­ing olive groves and other crops, notably vine­yards, are also avail­able.

The farm­land lots on sale are listed on the BTA web­site. Thirty-six per­cent of the avail­able land is in Sicily, 13 per­cent in Tuscany, 12 per­cent in Sardinia and 9 per­cent in Puglia.

To par­tic­i­pate, farm­ers must sub­mit their dec­la­ra­tion of inter­est by June 5^th.

The area and price vary con­sid­er­ably, from 5 hectares of olive trees sold for €100,000 near Caltagirone, Sicily, to 98 hectares for €316,000 in Arcidosso, Tuscany.

While the BTA auc­tion is open to every­one, spe­cific sup­port is set to be pro­vided to young farm­ers. The bank will allow farm­ers under 41 to pay the total price of the farm­land with a 30-years fixed-rate amor­ti­za­tion plan.

“Since its first edi­tion, BTA has auc­tioned more than 40,000 hectares of farm­land, dis­trib­uted from north to south, trig­ger­ing almost 7,000 dec­la­ra­tions of inter­est,” Ismea offi­cials told Olive Oil Times.

In the first five edi­tions, the BTA has sold 450 lots, mainly in the south­ern regions of Puglia, Sicily and Basilicata.

BTA is just one of Ismea’s ini­tia­tives to stim­u­late the inter­est of a new gen­er­a­tion of farm­ers. Another exam­ple, the Land Generation ini­tia­tive, pro­vides spe­cial financ­ing for younger farm­ers to expand their oper­a­tions or launch new farms.

Ismea offi­cials said younger farm­ers and women are sup­ported through a spe­cific ini­tia­tive that mixes loans at favor­able con­di­tions and grants.

“[These] are meant to strengthen cur­rent agri­cul­tural pro­duc­tion and the trans­for­ma­tion and com­mer­cial­iza­tion of agri­cul­tural prod­ucts, as well as fos­ter the diver­si­fi­ca­tion of agri­cul­tural income,” Ismea offi­cials said.

“The gen­er­a­tional turnover is cru­cial to keep rural areas alive and to sus­tain a com­pet­i­tive, inno­v­a­tive and eco­nom­i­cally and envi­ron­men­tally sus­tain­able agri­cul­ture,” they added. ​“Sadly, data show us that the young aban­don­ing rural areas is still very intense and con­sti­tutes a demo­graphic and socio-eco­nomic risk for entire ter­ri­to­ries.”

“At the same time, what clearly emerged in the last cen­sus by Istat [the Italian national sta­tis­tics agency] is the strong asso­ci­a­tion between the young farmer and a higher com­pet­i­tive capac­ity of the farm, which is a result of the will­ing­ness to invest, the intro­duc­tion of tech­no­log­i­cal inno­va­tion, the abil­ity to value the [farm­ers’] net­work,” the offi­cials con­cluded. ​“It also comes from a ten­dency to diver­sify income sources and give value to the ter­ri­tory.”