The Threat Of Olive Ebola

On Thursday, the co-operative Camp Mallorquí will be holding a conference in Palma. It will address issues such as technological innovation in agriculture, commercial opportunities and the future of farming co-operatives. But these will not be agricultural issues in general. There is one theme to the conference: almonds.

A further issue that will be discussed will be diseases and pests, and it is this issue which is by far the most pressing on the agenda. Almond trees are under renewed danger. So are olive trees. The danger comes in the form of a bacterium called "xylella fastidiosa".

Of American origin, this has already started to have a devastating effect on olive and almond trees in Italy and has now spread to France. Some 100,000 hectares of tree crops in Italy have been affected. There is no remedy other than to cut trees down and burn them in the hope of stopping the bacterium spreading. Which is a big hope. The bacterium is transmitted by leafhopping insects, which are extremely common.

So damaging has the bacterium been that it has acquired a deadly name - "olive ebola". It has not been detected in Mallorca, but farmers are naturally fearful that it might be. The consequences of it arriving on the island and taking hold could be enormous in terms of the island's economy and landscape. Its potential harm would greatly exceed that of the attacks on pines by processionary caterpillars or on palm trees by the "picudo rojo", the red beetle.

It poses a threat that is reminiscent of the phylloxera "plague" of the late nineteenth century. Mallorca had benefited greatly from the devastation of French vines by phylloxera earlier in that century. But when it arrived on Mallorca in the 1890s, the consequences for some rural areas of the island were catastrophic. Though it has since been argued that phylloxera was not as damaging as had been thought, there is no arguing the fact that it contributed to emigration and to a major shift in agricultural production. The vines were to return, but it is fair to say that the Mallorcan wine economy, a staple for so many centuries, didn't truly start its recovery until the 1970s, though the Franco regime had to take some of the blame for this delay because of its one-time insistence on an equally catastrophic self-sufficiency economic policy which placed an emphasis on subsistence crops.

There is a certain similarity between phylloxera and xylella fastidiosa. The grape phylloxera insect sucks sap from and feeds off leaves and roots. The result can be a fungal infection. Xylella fastidiosa insects also suck sap and transmit the bacterium in the process. There is still no actual remedy for phylloxera, though it has been combated by introducing resistant rootstock which creates a type of sap that repels the insect. As yet, a similar means of combating xylella fastidiosa appears not to exist.

At present, there is no formalised system of control against xylella fastidiosa, but the farming community wants controls of imported trees and of nurseries to be stepped up. A positive bit of news is that olive trees are typically imported from Andalusia where there is no evidence of the bacterium but also where the alert was first raised: the government in Andalusia, which has tightened its controls, was the one to let the rest of Spain know about the potential harm.

So, the threat, for the moment, is a hypothetical one, but as was seen with the palm beetle, it was public administration inertia that helped its diffusion. Before it truly took hold in Pollensa (where it is commonly said to have first been detected), attention was being drawn to an infection of palm trees. If local authorities had acted more swiftly, the loss of the island's palms would not now be as great as it is. At least, though, the threat is known about this time and it is one that would have greater economic consequence than the beetle. There are almost 25,000 hectares dedicated to almond production and a further 8,000 or so to olives, approximately a quarter of these for oil that has a protected designation of origin - the highly prized Mallorcan olive oil.

But there would be another consequence. Though the volume of farming land devoted to almonds has decreased significantly from what it once was, it has now stabilised, and it is almond production which gives Mallorca one of its most characteristic landscape features - the blossom of late winter. If this were to be threatened, if this were to disappear, there would be a loss very much greater than a mere economic one. And, unfortunately, there is more. It isn't just olive and almond trees that can be affected. So too can oleander and citrus trees, meaning lemon and orange groves. Just hope to God the bacterium stays away.

The Five Star Mould Breakers

I have something vaguely in common with Roberto Casaleggio and Beppe Grillo. Very vaguely. Italy's Five Star Movement came about through the internet, Grillo's blog, one that swiftly attracted an enormous following, becoming a virtual manifesto for what the Italian electorate were presented with at the weekend. Casaleggio and Grillo have kicked at the political establishment in Italy, at cronyism and the political system. Grillo, banished from mainstream media because he ruffled far too many feathers, especially Berlusconi's, has used alternative means, the internet, to make himself and Casaleggio heard and to rise from nowhere in becoming a political force.

In my student days there was no internet. There were no computers. There were, however, IBM typewriters and duplicators. There was also a group of individuals who created an alternative means of communication with the student body. Ostensibly, this was the magazine for one of the colleges at Lancaster. It swiftly ceased to be just for the college. It became a campus-wide phenomenon. It attacked everyone and everything, especially the student political establishment. The magazine wasn't against political ideologies per se but was against the stupidity of much of the politics.

For six months, the magazine was churned out at least once a week, sometimes more often. In our office, the walls of which became plastered with our own graffiti, there might at any time have been ten or more people: writers, cartoonists and the occasional member of the student establishment who would come on a secret mission to dish some dirt. The magazine rocked that establishment because it appealed to the broad student population that had little interest in student politics as such. It was crude, rude, scurrilous and irreverent. It was also subversive, an alternative form of agitprop turned on the agitpropists themselves.

The magazine folded after six months. The police were threatening to bring an action for obscenity. There was a further threat of libel, though the offending piece was not libellous (I should know because I wrote it). Neither threat came to pass. If the magazine was shut down, all would be forgotten. But it didn't end. The annual union elections were looming. We formed our own party. And we very nearly won.

Casaleggio and Grillo's Five Star Movement has very nearly won. In some respects, it has won. Even if it transpires that the party doesn't come into a coalition, it has won an astonishing victory in terms of turning the political establishment on its head. It has appealed to an electorate battered by austerity and also by the political system.

In Spain, Rajoy and Rubalcaba must be looking at what the Five Star Movement has achieved with horror. While Rubalcaba has achieved the remarkable feat of being less trusted than even Rajoy, both party leaders are viewed with what amounts to contempt. Circumstances aren't the same as in Italy in that there is the King thing as well as the separatist thing, but the political system is in a similar state of disrepute. Could a Five Star Movement rise from nowhere in Spain as well? In a way, it already has, but the "indignados" have not become a political entity as such. There is no obviously populist voice like Grillo.

The Five Star Movement, though, is a curiosity of non-alignment. Those who have been elected are free to make their own decisions. It is a coalition of non-ideology or several ideologies rolled into one. At university we were a mish-mash of left, right, centre and couldn't give a damn. We didn't stand for anything, because to stand for anything would have run counter to the whole purpose of the party.

And this is perhaps the Five Star Movement's weakness. While it professes to be an alternative and to advocate direct democracy and the dismantling of the established political system, how can it now become a part of that system? When we were faced at university with the sudden and horrifying prospect of actually winning, we came to the conclusion that we would promptly resign, were any of us to gain a position.

Ultimately, therefore, perhaps politics always revert to the norm and to the established. There could be a Spanish Five Star Movement but there is equally as likely to be a populist movement predicated on conventional ideologies, either right or left (and I'd suggest that the former, and well to the right as well, would be the more likely of the two). Casaleggio and Grillo have broken the mould, and maybe Spain will follow suit. But if they join in, will they have really broken it or will they just be new pieces in the old mould?


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.


Index for February 2013

Alcúdia's Mile - 2 February 2013
Balearics Gold Medals and Ramon Llull prizes - 27 February 2013
BBC programmes parody - 10 February 2013
Búger and rude place names - 15 February 2013
Climate change and tourism - 13 February 2013
Coca-Cola and Turespaña marketing assocation - 5 February 2013
Dinosaur theme park - 16 February 2013
Estación náutica Alcúdia - 12 February 2013
Ferdinand VII and football club ownership - 7 February 2013
Five Star Movement - 28 February 2013
Imperfect information - 11 February 2013
Judge José Castro - 25 February 2013
Labour reform - 17 February 2013
Language and Spanish personality - 26 February 2013
Orizonia collapse - 21 February 2013
Partido Popular secret accounts - 1 February 2013, 4 February 2013
President Bauzá's business affairs - 24 February 2013
Russian tourism - 22 February 2013
Santa Margalida and Western Sahara - 20 February 2013
Spain and Rugby World Cup - 8 February 2013
Spain's economy - 14 February 2013
Tour guides and Columbus - 3 February 2013
Tourist product survey - 6 February 2013
Town hall reform - 18 February 2013
Travel writing and Mallorca - 9 February 2013
Urdangarin case - 19 February 2013
Walking and private land - 23 February 2013