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Italy’s olive crisis intensifies as deadly tree disease spreads

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Re: Italy’s olive crisis intensifies as deadly tree disease spreads

#171

Post by chicob »

trainingaccount wrote: post #158
chicob wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really like Hacker News, and I usually read my tech-related news here first. Farming is kind of the family business, and I love it. I am also a physicist by training, and thus my interest in technology in general. Agriculture is becoming increasingly technological, and everything from farming gadgets to John Deere tractors hacking has come up many times. There are even some Plasma Physics applications to agricultur…

Can you invert a binary tree?

No. But I did some research on tree-like hierarchical associative memories. They have branches and all!

Re: Italy’s olive crisis intensifies as deadly tree disease spreads

#173

Post by chicob »

anon2775 wrote: post #132
buboard wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is not uncommon to own olive orchards in southern europe (a family thing). I have olives too.

Olive trees are planted decoratively and for crops here, but they're messy trees to have in city neighborhoods.

The wild variety (Olea oleaster) is not as messy.

Re: Italy’s olive crisis intensifies as deadly tree disease spreads

#174

Post by PanosJee »

chicob wrote: post #65
jimbokun wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious, what brought you to Hacker News? It's fascinating the variety of people who contribute here, and I'm wondering what would bring a Portuguese farmer to a site centered around technology and entrepreneurship. (I suppose I could equally ask why this site would be discussing a bacterial outbreak in Italian olive trees, and the answer could be "because it's interesting" to both questions.)

I really like Hacker News, and I usually read my tech-related news here first. Farming is kind of the family business, and I love it. I am also a physicist by training, and thus my interest in technology in general. Agriculture is becoming increasingly technological, and everything from farming gadgets to John Deere tractors hacking has come up many times. There are even some Plasma Physics applications to agricultur…

Wow! You need to check out Augmenta.ag

Re: Italy’s olive crisis intensifies as deadly tree disease spreads

#175

Post by inferiorhuman »

josario wrote: post #152
inferiorhuman wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While at the grocery store yesterday I noticed that the store had a few shelves of cutting boards and bowls made of olive wood. They're made from non-producing olive trees in Tunisia. The little blurb on the cutting board suggested that the Tunisians cut down the trees once they stop producing. I wonder if there's enough of a market that producing wood would incentivize cutting down infected trees. The grain is visua…

No, because the infected trees wood is crap and falls apart, it can't be used to make wood items or wooden stuff sadly :( And yes, the tree wood of healthy plants is amazing.

Oh that's a shame. On the other hand it's likely that olive growers can adapt (although this means that traditions will change). We've done it with bananas, and, to some extent, citrus.

Re: Italy’s olive crisis intensifies as deadly tree disease spreads

#176

Post by agumonkey »

chicob wrote: post #164
agumonkey wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you use electronics to monitor / help farming ?

Yes: not considering everything that comes with a tractor these days, it's basically irrigation programmers, pH meters, humidity probes, sonars and speed-adjustment controllers for sprayers. I hope someday I will be able to show HN some simple electronics of my own.

Interesting, do you think they improve yield and/or decrease workload ?

Re: Italy’s olive crisis intensifies as deadly tree disease spreads

#177

Post by ggm »

vanderZwan wrote: post #53

People outside of Italy are probably not aware of how seriously they take the topic of olive oil over there. The label "extra vergine" increases the price so much that there is a huge economic incentive for fraud. To combat this they have a taste police (literally) that checks that olive oil samples are not secretly mixes of fresh and old oil together. They are... quite opinionated, as you can see this exchange from…

We buy Spanish by preference when we cook. We buy Australian extra virgin for drissle

Re: Italy’s olive crisis intensifies as deadly tree disease spreads

#178

Post by ggm »

choot wrote: post #20

I wonder if such bacteria can be designed in a lab. And then used to attack developing countries massive agricultural production. Let's say, china and india are growing export regions. And if American or Russian companies design a specific bacteria to target their major agricultural exports then the prices will go up due to falling supply. So is this possible? Could this be happening somewhere in the world?

Although it's possible, occams razor does not suggest it is the most likely reason

Re: Italy’s olive crisis intensifies as deadly tree disease spreads

#179

Post by chicob »

agumonkey wrote: post #176
chicob wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes: not considering everything that comes with a tractor these days, it's basically irrigation programmers, pH meters, humidity probes, sonars and speed-adjustment controllers for sprayers. I hope someday I will be able to show HN some simple electronics of my own.

Interesting, do you think they improve yield and/or decrease workload ?

The irrigation controls have a direct and significant impact in yield. Other tools raise profitability by contributing to greater efficacy and less waste. The pH meter, for example, pretty much payed itself the first time it was used.

Re: Italy’s olive crisis intensifies as deadly tree disease spreads

#180

Post by koliber »

inferiorhuman wrote: post #146
josario wrote: post #84

I'm Italian and I come from Puglia. It strikes me directly. It's a hard punch in the stomach, problem is that people don't want to remove this old trees, they are even centuries old and so they make the disease spread more and more as time progress and as a matter of fact the olive oil selling is their only income. The state failed, they had no direct order to remove the trees nor economical help. As an example in my…

While at the grocery store yesterday I noticed that the store had a few shelves of cutting boards and bowls made of olive wood. They're made from non-producing olive trees in Tunisia. The little blurb on the cutting board suggested that the Tunisians cut down the trees once they stop producing. I wonder if there's enough of a market that producing wood would incentivize cutting down infected trees. The grain is visua…

When I was staying in southern Spain in February, the home had a fireplace. The local gas station sold olive tree firewood.

This points to the conclusion that some pruning of olive trees is going on on a regular basis. At the same time we saw plenty of gnarly old trees and wondered what the different philosophies of olive tree pruning/cycling are.

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