One-Third Fewer Olive Farms in Italy Now Than in 2010, Report Finds

Increasing inter­na­tional com­pe­ti­tion and quickly chang­ing mar­ket dynam­ics have pro­foundly affected the Italian agri­cul­tural land­scape in recent years.

Small fam­ily farms con­tribute less than they ever have to over­all agri­cul­tural out­put. Many small pro­duc­ers face ris­ing costs of inno­va­tion, automa­tion and dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing, while larger com­pa­nies have absorbed oth­ers.

Between 2010 and 2020, the num­ber of active farms fell from 1.6 mil­lion to 1.1 mil­lion. Previous data col­lected by the National Institute of Statistics (Istat) from 1982 show Italy had 3.1 mil­lion active farms at the time.

While a con­stant reduc­tion in farm num­bers was reported in the last 40 years, the pre­vi­ous decade’s 30-per­cent drop is a sig­nif­i­cant accel­er­a­tion of a process that is reshap­ing the sec­tor.

While their quan­tity reduces, farms are get­ting big­ger, with the aver­age farm cov­er­ing 11 hectares com­pared to eight in 2010 and five in 1982.

According to the Seventh Survey of Agricultural Italy 2010/2020, the num­ber of Italian olive farms is also falling quickly.

In the past decade, the num­ber of olive grow­ers fell from 902,075 to 61,368, a 31 per­cent drop. The over­all amount of land ded­i­cated to olive grow­ing has also decreased, drop­ping from 1,123,330 hectares to 994,318. Olive grow­ing has lost 11.5 per­cent of its actively-used sur­face in the last decade.

Over the same period, total agri­cul­tural and poten­tially usable land areas have fallen by 21 and 36 per­cent, respec­tively. However, these drops have not come as a sur­prise.

“We have been focus­ing on active farms at a time when many agri­cul­tural lands are aban­doned, not cur­rently in use or kept by their own­ers wait­ing for a bet­ter moment to invest in agri­cul­ture,” Roberto Gismondi, direc­tor of the agri­cul­tural sta­tis­tics divi­sion of Istat, told Olive Oil Times.

“The reduc­tion of the sur­face area comes from the grow­ing chal­lenge of man­ag­ing a field oper­a­tion with­out a true agri­cul­tural busi­ness, sense of entre­pre­neur­ship or a ded­i­ca­tion to spend time on the field,” he added. ​“Many aban­don their lands or do not use all of them at the same time.”

Family farms and sin­gle-indi­vid­ual com­pa­nies went from occu­py­ing 76 per­cent of avail­able land in 2010 to 73 per­cent in 2020. Meanwhile, larger com­pa­nies expanded from 14 per­cent of agri­cul­tural sur­face area to 18 per­cent, with cap­i­tal com­pa­nies also increas­ing from 2.7 to 3.6 per­cent.

The aver­age size of a small farm is cur­rently 8.6 hectares, com­pared with 42 hectares for larger com­pa­nies.

Generally, larger agri­cul­tural com­pa­nies have higher resilience to mar­ket tur­bu­lence and more oppor­tu­ni­ties to invest and inno­vate.

“Being small is more dif­fi­cult than ever as the com­pe­ti­tion from for­eign pro­duc­ers is con­stantly grow­ing, and the ris­ing prices of raw mate­ri­als are also chal­leng­ing,” Gismondi said.

“Our agri­cul­ture comes from fam­ily-man­aged farms, which is chang­ing over time,” he added. ​“The Covid-19 pan­demic and the war are greatly accel­er­at­ing a process of farms merg­ing and entre­pre­neur­ship con­cen­tra­tion.”

Almost 800,000 com­pa­nies in Italy cul­ti­vate tree crops on a total sur­face of 2.1 mil­lion hectares, with an aver­age farm cov­er­ing 2.7 hectares. In Puglia and Calabria, olive trees account for 70 per­cent of the over­all wood­land sur­face.

Gismoldi attrib­uted the decreas­ing num­ber of olive farms and olive groves to the spread of Xylella fas­tidiosa in some parts of Puglia.

“On top of that, we have many aban­don­ing their lands,” he said. ​“Think of the fam­i­lies who used to grow dozens of olive trees for their own use. Sometimes they find the costs exceed the ben­e­fit, and the cur­rent cli­mate con­di­tions do not help those who would choose oth­er­wise.”

“The olive tree remains essen­tial to our agri­cul­ture, but com­pet­i­tive­ness from abroad is affect­ing the sec­tor,” Gismondi added. ​“When we look at olive oils sold in Italian super­mar­kets, we can see that 80 to 90 per­cent do not come from Italian olives but get sold because they are cheaper.”

In other agri­cul­tural sec­tors, merg­ing smaller pro­duc­ers into larger farms brings quick results. However, this is not the case in the olive oil sec­tor.

“Such mar­ket oper­a­tions in the tree crop sec­tors are slower, espe­cially with olive trees, as many olive groves are not man­aged by a com­pany at all, unlike other crops and arable land,” Gismondi said.

The change in Italian agri­cul­ture is also demon­strated by its work­force dynam­ics as the sec­tor moves away from fam­ily farm dynam­ics. In 2010, 24 per­cent of agri­cul­tural work­ers were not part of a fam­ily farm. Now that fig­ure is 47 per­cent.

“Such num­bers show a gen­er­a­tional change. Still, we are see­ing a sig­nif­i­cant over­all work­force short­age,” Gismondi said, refer­ring to the 29 per­cent drop in the over­all num­ber of agri­cul­tural work­ers from 2010 to 2020.

“This short­age is an aspect of pri­mary rel­e­vance,” he added. ​“We still see dif­fi­cul­ties due to Covid-19. On top of that, there are oppor­tu­ni­ties for agri­cul­tural sea­sonal work­ers in other European coun­tries and reduced incen­tives in Italy for work­ers to work on farms. To solve this, we need a new spirit of inno­va­tion and entre­pre­neur­ship.”

However, the European Union’s lat­est Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) could pro­vide new oppor­tu­ni­ties for cre­ative agri­cul­tural entre­pre­neurs by pro­vid­ing funds more strictly related to how farms are oper­ated than they were in the past.

“In this decade, the CAP is mov­ing from heli­copter money for farm­ers to more spe­cific sup­port in favor of those com­pa­nies that have embraced goals such as envi­ron­men­tally-friendly agri­cul­ture or organic agri­cul­ture,” Gismondi said. ​“This turn rep­re­sents a chal­lenge for small farms, and it might fuel the merg­ing of farms.”

“Today, farm­ers have the oppor­tu­nity to redesign their pro­duc­tion sys­tems using a new logic, less focused on quan­tity and more on qual­ity,” he added. ​“All of this requires pro­fes­sional train­ing and a spirit of sac­ri­fice. It asks farm­ers to read the mar­ket, under­stand its dynam­ics and see where they can best fit.”

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