Puglia, Italy
Olive landscapes that carry thousands of years of history, now losing trees faster than they can be replaced.
Puglia, Italy
Olive landscapes that carry thousands of years of history, now losing trees faster than they can be replaced.
Olive groves, 350,000+ ha
Xylella fastidiosa
Biodiversity recovery
Radica
Puglia is the most important olive-producing region in Italy, with more than 350,000 hectares of groves. At its heart lies the Plain of Monumental Olive Trees, where plantations thousands of years old still stand. These are not only cultural heritage. They are a living sign of local identity.
Over-exploitation and the bacterial disease Xylella fastidiosa are killing trees at an alarming pace. What is lost is not only production, but a landscape that took millennia to form and cannot simply be replanted.
Evidence suggests that less intensive farming, built on biodiversity and the restoration of ecological dynamics, can strengthen the natural resistance of these trees. What remains unclear is how to work through the interdependencies between production systems, economic drivers, cultural attachment and environmental impact.
FIREFLIES works on how biodiversity can return to olive agroecosystems, and what that recovery does for the trees themselves. Less intensive practices, healthier ecological dynamics, and the conditions under which farmers can realistically adopt them.
The project also looks at how ecological restoration connects with carbon in these landscapes, exploring whether biodiversity and carbon can be valued together rather than separately.
Which measures are tested, and on which farms, is decided with the growers who work these groves.
Virginia Cepollina, Radica
v.cepollina@radica.earth
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