Farmers in Lazio Kick Off Harvest at Emperor Hadrian's Estate

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In the heart of Roman Emperor Hadrian’s spec­tac­u­lar villa, not far from Rome, farm­ers har­vested the olives of the Alberto Bello, the most famous of the ancient trees thriv­ing on the huge estate.

The cer­e­mony sig­naled the begin­ning of the 2022 har­vest in the cen­tral Lazio region. Growers and pro­duc­ers used the unique his­tor­i­cal set­ting to express their alarm about the chal­lenges fac­ing tra­di­tional olive groves in Italy.

Coldiretti, a farm­ers’ union, and Unaprol, an olive oil pro­duc­ers’ asso­ci­a­tion, warned that a grow­ing num­ber of olive groves are aban­doned through­out the coun­try as pro­duc­tion costs rise and profit mar­gins drop.

“Thirty mil­lion trees are at risk,” they said. The groups added that the impact of cli­mate change is tak­ing a toll on pro­duc­tiv­ity while rais­ing future uncer­tainty.

During the cer­e­mony, the asso­ci­a­tions empha­sized how the Roman civ­i­liza­tion sig­nif­i­cantly con­tributed to the devel­op­ment of olive grow­ing and milling tech­niques. Olive oil became a source of wealth, and the meth­ods Romans devel­oped con­tin­ued to be used until the end of the 19^th cen­tury.

Coldiretti and Unaprol added that Italian olive cul­ture comes from that tra­di­tion, as ancient Roman authors such as Marco Porzio Catone and Marco Terenzio Varrone in the third and sec­ond cen­turies CE wrote the first pro­duc­tion instruc­tions.

“Those were the the­o­ret­i­cal and tech­ni­cal prin­ci­ples which today still con­sti­tute the basis for high-qual­ity olive oil, with a unique range of fla­vor, tastes, nuances and inten­si­ties,” the two asso­ci­a­tions wrote.

Roman cul­ture, they said, led to the many local olive oil pro­duc­ers who have made Italian olive oil famous through­out the world.

“Still, 20 per­cent of the 150 mil­lion olive trees of Italy is cur­rently aban­doned, as the effects of the war in Ukraine and the inter­na­tional ten­sions make it dif­fi­cult to invest in olive grow­ing,” the two asso­ci­a­tions wrote, cit­ing data com­ing from Crea, the Italian Council for Research in Agriculture.

“With the costs for olive farms mul­ti­ply­ing now by 200 per­cent, almost one out of 10 – 9 per­cent – works at a loss and risks clos­ing down,” they added.

In the shade of the Albero Bello, the two asso­ci­a­tions said the over­all vol­umes of olive pro­duc­tion in the coun­try are falling while energy costs have risen 170 per­cent.

Furthermore, fer­til­izer costs rose by 129 per­cent, glass by 30 per­cent, labels by 35 per­cent, card­board by 45 per­cent, tin cans by 60 per­cent and plas­tics by 70 per­cent. On top of that, elec­tric­ity now costs five times more than it did last year.

Nicola Di Noia, head of the olive oil depart­ment in Coldiretti, said the two asso­ci­a­tions ​“are com­mit­ted to reverse course.”

“They are com­mit­ted to restor­ing and main­tain­ing the olive groves in some of the most rel­e­vant arche­o­logic parks in Italy,” he added. ​“They are also try­ing to save the Monumental Olive Trees Valley hit by Xylella fas­tidiosa which is affect­ing Apulian olive farm­ing.”

“By study­ing cen­turies-old trees such as Albero Bello in the Hadrian’s Villa… we might iden­tify use­ful aspects of the resilience to cli­mate change as well as the pro­duc­tive behav­ior [of the plants], the ver­sa­til­ity towards the needs of sus­tain­able inten­si­fi­ca­tion of olive cul­ti­va­tion and to improve the health char­ac­ter­is­tics of the [olive oil] prod­ucts,” Di Noia con­tin­ued.

David Granieri, Unaprol’s pres­i­dent, said mit­i­gat­ing the impacts of cli­mate change is pre­cisely why it is impor­tant to restore the pro­duc­tion of Italy’s his­toric olive trees.

“Centuries-old olive trees are not only guardians of our his­tory, but they might also con­tribute to help­ing us to bet­ter face cli­mate change,” he said. ​“That is the rea­son we need to work to restore and bring back pro­duc­tion to as many of those trees as pos­si­ble.”

“The goal is not only to improve our knowl­edge but also to reduce our depen­dency from olive oil imports so as to relaunch with ade­quate invest­ments Made in Italy extra vir­gin olive oil,” Granieri con­cluded.

• Coldiretti
• Unaprol