New Olive Groves Take Root in Italy’s Northern Regions of Piedmont, Trentino

Summary

Northern Italy has seen sig­nif­i­cant growth in olive cul­ti­va­tion in recent years, with Piedmont, Friuli Venezia Giulia, and Liguria lead­ing the way. This expan­sion is dri­ven by both cli­mate change and a strat­egy of diver­si­fi­ca­tion in areas tra­di­tion­ally dom­i­nated by other crops, such as vines and apples. Producers in Trentino-Alto Adige are plant­ing olive trees in areas long dom­i­nated by other crops, with a focus on main­tain­ing bio­di­ver­sity and pro­mot­ing the cul­tural value of olive oil.

In recent years, north­ern Italy has seen an expan­sion in olive cul­ti­va­tion. Between 2020 and 2023, Piedmont recorded a 40 per­cent increase in olive-grow­ing area, fol­lowed by Friuli Venezia Giulia at 16 per­cent and Liguria at 10 per­cent, accord­ing to ISMEA. More mod­est growth was also recorded in Emilia-Romagna, Trentino-Alto Adige, Veneto and Lombardy.

While this trend appears to be partly dri­ven by increas­ingly favor­able con­di­tions asso­ci­ated with cli­mate change, it is also being dri­ven by a strat­egy of pro­duc­tion diver­si­fi­ca­tion in areas where more prof­itable crops have long dom­i­nated.

In Trentino-Alto Adige, olive-grow­ing area now exceeds 400 hectares, con­cen­trated mainly around Upper Lake Garda and stretch­ing north from the Sarca Valley to the Lakes Valley.

In the mid-2000s, some pro­duc­ers began plant­ing olive trees in the foothills of Mount Baldo, on the Brentonico Plateau, an area long dom­i­nated by vines and apples, known for its cen­turies-old chest­nut tra­di­tion.

“The first olive orchards were set up about fif­teen years ago, and today, we are fol­low­ing about 20 olive grow­ers and roughly 2,500 trees in total,” Gianluca Fruet, spokesper­son for the Slow Food Community for the Culture of Trentino Extra Virgin Olive Oil, told Olive Oil Times.

“In fact, olive trees have always grown here, even though the other crops pre­vailed com­mer­cially,” he added. ​“Over the past decade, how­ever, inter­est in olive oil pro­duc­tion has increased, and sev­eral farm­ers have begun invest­ing in new groves.”

In par­al­lel with the devel­op­ment of the local olive sec­tor, the Slow Food Community for the Culture of Trentino Extra Virgin Olive Oil was estab­lished in 2024.

“In recent years, pro­duc­tion has become more con­sis­tent, and there is grow­ing inter­est in fur­ther expand­ing it,” Fruet said. ​“This has many pos­i­tive aspects, as it helps main­tain bio­di­ver­sity, pre­serves the beauty of the land­scape and, we hope, may also gen­er­ate an addi­tional income stream for oper­a­tors.”

In the new groves, farm­ers have planted young saplings and also replanted and restored aban­doned trees. Most of the new orchards fea­ture Casaliva, which is well-suited to local soil and cli­mate con­di­tions, along with Frantoio and Leccino, both val­ued for their adapt­abil­ity.

“As a Slow Food Community, we aim to raise aware­ness about olive oil and its social, his­tor­i­cal and cul­tural value, while help­ing peo­ple rec­og­nize qual­ity,” Fruet said. ​“One of our farm­ers, Federica Stenech, is orga­niz­ing tast­ing courses for chil­dren, which have drawn strong inter­est and par­tic­i­pa­tion. Building on this suc­cess, we are now prepar­ing fur­ther edu­ca­tional events to spread olive oil cul­ture.”

In Italy​’s Piedmont region, roughly 350 hectares of olive groves are con­cen­trated in Monferrato, Canavese and the areas around Torino, Saluzzo and Pinerolo.

A young com­pany has also begun cul­ti­vat­ing olive trees in the Langhe, an area renowned for red wines and as a cen­ter of hazel­nut pro­duc­tion.

“We rep­re­sent the fourth gen­er­a­tion of our fam­ily enter­prise, which began with our great-grand­fa­ther,” Rinaldi said. ​“After World War I, when this was a dis­ad­van­taged area, he traded typ­i­cal Langhe prod­ucts such as wheat, meat and wine for Ligurian prod­ucts like anchovies, extra vir­gin olive oil and salt. The route con­nect­ing the two regions, where these exchanges took place, was called the Salt Route.”

The busi­ness evolved under Rinaldi’s grand­fa­ther and later passed to his father, who today co-man­ages the fam­ily com­pany based in Imperia. In addi­tion to dis­tri­b­u­tion, the fam­ily moved into pro­duc­tion, mak­ing olive oil from 8,000 Taggiasca trees on estates between Chiusanico and Prelà in Liguria.

“A few years ago, my cousin Matilde and I entered the man­age­ment of the com­pany,” Rinaldi said. ​“She holds a degree in Gastronomic Sciences, and my train­ing has focused specif­i­cally on olive oil.”

“We decided to pro­duce oil instead of wine on our land in the Langhe, with the ambi­tion of achiev­ing for high-qual­ity extra vir­gin olive oil what the Barolo wine­mak­ers did with great wine thirty years ago,” he added. ​“We wanted, in a sense, to retrace the Salt Route in reverse.”

To bring the idea to life, the Rinaldi cousins acquired the his­toric local brand Meriggio and launched the ​“Olive Trees in Langa” project, replac­ing vine­yards on the rolling hills of Alba and Diano d’Alba with about 1,200 olive trees.

Today, Frantoio accounts for 60 per­cent of the new orchards, which also include Grignan, Leccino, Maurino and Pendolino as pol­li­na­tors.

“It was a gam­ble, because a plot of land with a vine­yard in this area has con­sid­er­able mar­ket value, whereas the val­u­a­tion of land planted with olive trees is still a ques­tion mark,” Rinaldi said, not­ing that some Barolo vine­yard parcels can be worth sev­eral mil­lion euros per hectare.

“It may seem that olive trees are tak­ing hold today thanks to the effects of cli­mate change, which is partly true, but in fact they have always been here,” he added. ​“The severe cold that hit Europe dur­ing the Little Ice Age wiped out most of the olive orchards around 1600, and after­ward vines pre­vailed for rea­sons of com­mer­cial prof­itabil­ity.”

“By plant­ing olive groves, we are doing some­thing that today appears rev­o­lu­tion­ary to many,” he said, ​“although for us, car­ry­ing for­ward a hun­dred-year legacy of olive oil pro­duc­tion, it is a mat­ter of con­sis­tency.”

Today, the com­pany man­ages nearly 1,500 trees, which are grad­u­ally enter­ing pro­duc­tion. The first har­vest came from about 250 trees in aban­doned groves that the Rinaldi cousins restored after tak­ing them over. They plan to expand fur­ther.

“The pedo­cli­matic con­di­tions and expo­sures are ideal,” Rinaldi said. ​“However, man­age­ment costs are high because we are work­ing on hilly ter­rain.”

“We must also con­sider that there are no pub­lic fund­ing pro­grams avail­able for our region yet, because the num­ber of olive grow­ers is still lim­ited,” he added. ​“I am con­vinced that if and when funds become avail­able, olive oil pro­duc­tion will increase even fur­ther.”

Rinaldi said a cen­tral goal of the project is to strengthen bio­di­ver­sity and improve the sus­tain­abil­ity of local agri­cul­ture. The com­pany is seek­ing to diver­sify beyond vine­yards and hazel­nuts, two mono­cul­tures that have sig­nif­i­cantly impacted the ter­ri­tory.

To increase pro­duc­tion and improve effi­ciency, one of the next planned steps is to con­vert an old farm­house on the prop­erty into a state-of-the-art mill.

“I did not expect it, but there is an ever-grow­ing inter­est in olive oil,” Rinaldi said. ​“That moti­vates us to expand pro­duc­tion, pur­su­ing a vision in which qual­ity and envi­ron­men­tal com­mit­ment go hand in hand.”