Olive Growing Returns to Italy’s Smallest Region

Summary

Valle d’Aosta, Italy’s small­est region with a lim­ited olive-grow­ing area, has seen a recent increase in the num­ber of olive grow­ers and land ded­i­cated to olives due to fac­tors such as cli­mate shifts and the need to pro­tect aban­doned land. The region’s grow­ers have formed the Associazione Valdostana Olivicoltori (AVO) to sup­port olive cul­ti­va­tion, with plans to estab­lish a mill in Valle d’Aosta and dou­ble olive oil pro­duc­tion over the next decade by col­lec­tively plant­ing new trees.

Tucked into the north­west­ern tip of Italy and sur­rounded by the Alps, Valle d’Aosta is the country’s small­est region and also the one with the small­est olive-grow­ing area.

According to the lat­est ISTAT Agriculture Census, the region counted just over 70 olive farms in 2020. By com­par­i­son, Puglia, the country’s lead­ing olive-grow­ing region, had 161,009. Land devoted to olives in Valle d’Aosta also remained extremely lim­ited.

In recent years, how­ever, both the num­ber of grow­ers and the sur­face area ded­i­cated to olives have begun to rise.

A sur­vey by the Associazione Valdostana Olivicoltori (AVO) indi­cates that plant­i­ngs have increased from 3,000 olive trees in 2021 to 5,000 today.

The renewed inter­est in olive cul­ti­va­tion has been dri­ven by a com­bi­na­tion of fac­tors, includ­ing shift­ing cli­mate con­di­tions and the need to pro­tect land left aban­doned as gen­er­a­tional turnover declines.

Valle d’Aosta’s olive tra­di­tion has ancient roots, much like in the other north­ern Italian regions. Historical doc­u­ments attest to the pres­ence of olive groves in the area as early as 515. In 1635, his­to­rian Francesco Agostino Della Chiesa described olive trees thriv­ing ​“in many parts” of the region thanks to its favor­able south­ern expo­sure. Archives of the Collegiate Church of Saint-Gilles in Verrès also record olive har­vests in the 1770s.

Over the last cen­tury, olive trees were grad­u­ally set aside in favor of more prof­itable crops such as vines. Today, though, the lack of gen­er­a­tional turnover has left many plots at risk of aban­don­ment, espe­cially on rugged ter­rain where mechan­i­cal equip­ment can­not be used.

That has led many farm­ers to return to olives, which can be tended with­out heavy machin­ery and also help sta­bi­lize ter­raced land.

“I planted the very first olive trees in the mid-1980s, but we man­aged to expand pro­duc­tion and make our first oil in the late 1990s,” said Dario Martinelli, whom Olive Oil Times con­tacted for a fol­low-up to a 2018 inter­view.

He was among the founders of the first pro­duc­ers’ asso­ci­a­tion for Piedmont and Valle d’Aosta in 2003. Later, in 2021, he co-founded AVO and became its first pres­i­dent.

“I planted Leccino, which at the time was the vari­ety best suited to these pedo­cli­matic con­di­tions, and later I added Frantoio, which ripens slightly later and allows for bet­ter har­vest man­age­ment,” Martinelli said. ​“Now, the orchard con­tains 180 trees. Forming large plots in this region is dif­fi­cult, because land is rarely avail­able and, when it is, it is usu­ally sold in small parcels.”

Martinelli recalled that the first har­vests had to be sched­uled between one snow­fall and the next. In recent years, by con­trast, olives have usu­ally been picked in much milder weather. His obser­va­tion appears to align with the cli­mate shift sci­en­tists are doc­u­ment­ing, includ­ing in Olive Oil Times’ report on the shift in global tem­per­a­tures.

Through their first asso­ci­a­tion, grow­ers in Valle d’Aosta orga­nized milling oper­a­tions in neigh­bor­ing Piedmont, where they still usu­ally bring their olives to be crushed.

“At its foun­da­tion, one of AVO’s main goals was to even­tu­ally bring a mill to Valle d’Aosta,” Martinelli said. ​“Now, an ini­tial round of regional fund­ing has enabled us to take the first step toward mak­ing that pos­si­ble.”

The eco­nomic fea­si­bil­ity study for the mill will be pre­sented at the next AVO mem­bers’ assem­bly.

“There are two pos­si­ble sites, in the vil­lages of Donnas and Hône, and we are eval­u­at­ing where the facil­ity could be estab­lished, either by build­ing a new struc­ture or restor­ing an old one,” said Silvia Nicco, who became AVO’s pres­i­dent in 2024.

Nicco said she became a grower after reclaim­ing land where her father once cul­ti­vated a vine­yard. Today, she pro­duces oil from about 90 trees for house­hold use, like most AVO mem­bers.

The asso­ci­a­tion now brings together 80 olive grow­ers and pro­vides infor­ma­tion on organic grove man­age­ment, with sup­port from agron­o­mists and agrotech­ni­cians.

“These are dif­fi­cult lands, char­ac­ter­ized by chal­leng­ing ter­races that can­not be accessed by mechan­i­cal equip­ment,” Nicco said. ​“We believe that most new orchards are being estab­lished on land for­merly used for wine pro­duc­tion that had been left uncul­ti­vated because of dimin­ish­ing gen­er­a­tional suc­ces­sion. Because of the terrain’s mor­phol­ogy, the largest orchards con­tain no more than 300 trees.”

“However, it is impor­tant to note that olive grow­ing does not com­pete with vines,” she added. ​“Rather, it reclaims areas that would oth­er­wise be aban­doned. Olive trees require a dif­fer­ent agri­cul­tural approach and can be cul­ti­vated with­out mechan­i­cal means, which has helped facil­i­tate their return. This is not some­thing new. We are redis­cov­er­ing the olive tree, which was already cul­ti­vated here in ancient times.”

Nicco said one AVO mem­ber recently cre­ated a label, while oth­ers are work­ing on projects to bring their extra vir­gin olive oil to mar­ket and expand pro­duc­tion. Each year, AVO grow­ers col­lec­tively pur­chase and plant 400 to 500 new trees, aim­ing to dou­ble pro­duc­tion over the next decade.

“These lands are steep and ter­raced, char­ac­ter­ized by tra­di­tional dry stone walls that sup­port them,” said Antonino De Maria, an agron­o­mist spe­cial­iz­ing in olive grow­ing in Piedmont and Valle d’Aosta. ​“This mor­phol­ogy makes cul­ti­va­tion extremely chal­leng­ing. The impos­si­bil­ity of using mechan­i­cal equip­ment had made grape grow­ing very costly. To avoid leav­ing plots uncul­ti­vated, many farm­ers intro­duced the olive tree as a hardy and eas­ier-to-grow plant. In addi­tion, it helps main­tain the land’s struc­tural integrity, pro­tect­ing it from hydro­ge­o­log­i­cal risks.”

Most olive groves are located in the south­ern part of the region, par­tic­u­larly around Donnas near the bor­der with Piedmont. Farmers from the two regions have often joined forces to make col­lec­tive pur­chases of saplings to reduce costs.

“Initially, the most pop­u­lar vari­eties were Leccino, Frantoio and Pendolino,” De Maria said. ​“In recent years, some orchards have also been planted with Leccio del Corno and Biancheria, a vari­ety native to the Trieste area.”

From an agro­nomic stand­point, he added, olive trees in the region appear to be less affected by fun­gal dis­eases thanks to good ven­ti­la­tion, which helps pre­vent these phy­topatholo­gies.

“The par­tic­u­larly demand­ing work­ing con­di­tions, which have led many to describe it as ​‘heroic agri­cul­ture,’ still drive pro­duc­tion costs higher than in other areas,” De Maria said. ​“Yet this has not dis­cour­aged farm­ers, whose com­mit­ment is help­ing pre­serve both the beauty of the land­scape and its hydro­ge­o­log­i­cal bal­ance.”