Long stands of trees slowly dying, turning white and withering – a scene from southern Italy, where a bacteria called Xylella fastidiosa is ravaging olive trees. There is no known cure for the disease it causes. Since scientists first discovered the bacteria in Puglia in 2013, it has killed a third of the region’s 60 million olive trees.
In the past, half of Italy’s olive oil was produced from these olive trees in Apulia. Many were several centuries old.
“The largest part of the territory was completely destroyed,” described Donato Boscia, a plant virologist and lead researcher for Xylella at the Institute for Sustainable Plant Protection in Bari. Farms stopped producing, olive mills went bankrupt and tourists stopped going to the places. The bacterium caused approximately one billion euros worth of damage (25 billion crowns).
And the situation continues to worsen. In February, scientists from Puglia discovered another subspecies of this destructive bacterium that has destroyed American vineyards. Until then, he had never appeared in Italy.
The bacterium Xylella is one of the most dangerous plant pests in the world. In the last century, it ravaged grapevines in the US, orange trees in Brazil and pear trees in Taiwan. The European Union has the bacterium on its list of priority quarantine pests, yet it has made its way across its borders.
Evidence shows that the bacterium came from Latin America and most likely hitched a ride with ornamental coffee plants that continue to enter the EU via the Netherlands, a country with a long tradition and interest in importing plants.
Free trade
The European Union is based on free trade, yet it is through its hundreds of ports that pests reach the continent, destroying its biodiversity and agriculture. In 2016, the European Union tightened regulations that should control what arrives and flies into countries. But experts agree that this is simply not possible due to the huge number of border crossings.
On a steamy June morning, Paolo Solmi, a phytosanitary inspector at the port of Ravenna in northern Italy, orders his team to open the first of 28 containers of Egyptian potatoes to be inspected that day. They each fill sacks with 100 potatoes and then take them to laboratories for standardized EU tests. “Once these checks have taken place, the goods can move freely within the European Union,” explains Solmi.
The EU has an open import system: anything known to be harmless can be imported. Some countries, such as New Zealand and Chile, have opted for a closed system: everything is assumed to be harmful until proven otherwise.
Ash trees, citrus, celery
According to Alberto Santini, a forest pathologist at Italy’s National Research Council, an alarming number of plant pests and diseases from third countries are entering this open system.
New bacteria now threaten, for example, Portuguese citrus, ash trees in Poland or carrots and celery in most countries. The situation is also aggravated by climate change and changing natural conditions.
“If you know your enemy, you can try to prevent them from entering the country,” Santini said. But this does not happen, because many bacteria or pests are harmless in their home countries. The ecosystem there is ready for them.
Researchers Wopke van der Werf and Hongyu Sun from the Netherlands’ Wageningen University & Research provided Aktuálně.cz with data showing that between 1975 and 2020, 1,720 outbreaks caused by insects, pathogens and nematodes were recorded in the EU, with half of the known outbreaks occurring in Italy, France and Spain.
There is no alternative
Paolo Solmi is aware of the challenge. “Europe was born around the movement of goods, capital and people. Our task is to do our best within an open phytosanitary system because there is currently no alternative,” he said.
The economic costs that the EU could lose in terms of trade are considerable, but so is the cost of damage caused by foreign pests and diseases. “The main problem in the economic field is the lack of data,” says Françoise Petter, former assistant director of the European and Mediterranean Plant Protection Organization.
More thorough verification of plants coming into Europe would slow down trade. But there is a lack of data to show whether this would pay off, provided that EU agriculture and biodiversity are preserved.
This article was created in collaboration with The Guardian, Follow The Money and Vert and was produced with the support of Journalismfund Europe.
Tags: dangerous bacteria rampant Europe south Italy ancient olive trees ravaged
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