Ancient olive trees are being uprooted from southern Italy’s ancient groves and sold to wealthy people across Europe keen to have a gnarled old tree as a chic adornment in their garden.
Thieves regularly sneak into olive groves across southern Italy, using mechanical diggers to uproot the trees, the oldest of which have covered the region’s hillsides for more than 2 000 years.
Earlier this month police near Lecce, in Apulia — the country’s largest olive oil producer — stopped a lorry carrying scores of trees, many more than 100 years old, and several similar hauls have been reported.
”This has become a roaring trade now,” said Domenico Viti, regional representative of Italia Nostra (Our Italy), which campaigns to protect the olive trees as part of Italy’s heritage.
A decree introduced to stop people cutting down ancient olive trees for firewood during the second world war means Italian farmers require authorisation each time they want to uproot a tree. But thieves and farmers are ripping out scores of the gnarled old plants, knowing the authorities cannot keep tabs on all the region’s 15-million trees.
In Apulia, on the heel of Italy, where the oldest trees produce a poorer quality of oil that for years was used in lamps, farmers are increasingly tempted to sell off the trees rather than sweat over a poor-quality harvest each year.
”I see lorries loaded with 100-year-old trees rumbling by every week,” said Serenella Balestrazzi, owner of Serenerba organic olive oil farm in Ostuni.
The trees, which the Romans spread throughout Europe, can live for more than 2 000 years and a twisted, gnarled old tree fetches between â,¬3,000 and â,¬5 000 euros at designer garden centres in northern Italy.
”Almost everyone who is anyone in this region has an ancient olive tree in their garden now,” said a representative at Archiverde garden stylists, in the Varese region,.
Despite attempts to acclimatise the trees, insulating their trunks with straw for several months, many die within the first year, caught by northern frosts. – Guardian Unlimited Â