Agriculture · Italy · Post-Xylella replant service gap

Xylella killed 21M Puglia olives. 8 years on, replant stuck at 17%.

Xylella fastidiosa subsp. pauca (a plant-killing bacterium spread by the spittlebug, a small sap-sucking insect) has killed roughly 21 million olive trees across about 8,000 km² of the Salento (the southern tip of Italy's Puglia region — about 40% of its land area). Eight years into the Region of Puglia's regeneration plan, the Region's own February 2025 report says only 17% of the planned replanting with resistant cultivars (Leccino and FS17/Favolosa, the two olive varieties cleared by the Osservatorio Fitosanitario, Puglia's plant-health authority) has actually been carried out. Growers describe an operational bottleneck: no Italian operating company packages dead-tree uprooting, drip-irrigation install on cleared land, certified resistant nursery stock, and the per-project regulator paperwork into a single fixed-price contract sized for Salento smallholders. The trees keep dying whether the funding bureaucracy moves or not.

01The pain

In Supersano, in the Salento (the southern tip of Italy's Puglia region), Giuseppe Agrosì runs an olive farm that Italy's Ministry of Agriculture (MASAF) named in December 2025 as a national model for replanting after Xylella, the bacterial disease that has been killing Puglia olive trees since 2013.¹ His farm is the exception. Costantino Carparelli, who chairs Coldiretti Lecce (the local chapter of Italy's main farmers' association), said in February 2025 it was "urgent to uproot the dead olive trees still in the fields, and secure funds to finish the work."²

Xylella has killed about 21 million olive trees across roughly 8,000 km² of southern Puglia, about 40% of the region.³ The Region of Puglia's February 2025 status report says only 17% of the planned replanting with resistant cultivars (Leccino and FS17/Favolosa, cleared by the Osservatorio Fitosanitario, Puglia's plant-health authority) is done.⁴ Coldiretti Lecce counts 115,000 hectares untouched. Against 60 million euros of funding, growers filed 8,000 applications worth 220 million euros.⁵

Only 17% of the planned post-Xylella olive replanting in the Salento has been carried out.⁴

Money is not the bottleneck. The missing piece is an operating company that bundles four steps into one contract: uprooting the dead trees (espianto), installing trellis and drip irrigation, sourcing certified resistant stock, and processing the Osservatorio paperwork. Funded growers wait over a year for ARIF (Puglia's regional irrigation agency) to connect the water; trade press reports young replanted trees dying of thirst.⁶

Money is not the bottleneck. The missing piece is an operating company that bundles the four steps a Salento smallholder needs into one contract. — Italy · Salento olive-grove trade press

02Who solves this today

We searched for an Italian operating company that runs the shape this gap calls for: an outfit that fields its own crews to do the four-step replant job — uproot the dead trees (espianto), install trellis and drip irrigation on the cleared land, source certified resistant nursery stock (Leccino, FS17/Favolosa, Lecciana, or Leccio del Corno), and process the per-project Osservatorio Fitosanitario paperwork — packaged as one fixed-price-per-hectare contract a Salento smallholder can sign and pay against a Region of Puglia replant grant. We ran Italian-language queries across olive-trade press, Region of Puglia supplier registries, MASAF-recognised replant-model lists, and adjacent agronomy-services directories, and we read every plausible vendor's product pages. What we found:

Studio Tecnico Agronomico Casciaro (Lecce) — a CAA (Centro Assistenza Agricola, an authorised farm-paperwork agency) running an "Emergenza Xylella" desk that helps growers apply for replant funding and prepare the related dossiers. Useful for the paperwork step, but the firm does not field uprooting, trellis-install, drip-irrigation, or planting crews. studiocasciaro.it
Agromillora Group (Spanish-Italian olive-nursery group) — supplies certified resistant nursery stock to the trade. Solves the plant-material step of the bundle (Leccino, FS17/Favolosa, Lecciana, Leccio del Corno) and publishes industry explainers. Not a service-crew operator: no product page concretely sells turn-key uprooting, irrigation install, or paperwork-bundle contracts. agromillora.com
OlivaMi (Lecce; non-profit association) — runs a tree-adoption fundraising model: donors pay roughly €32 a year to sponsor an olive tree planted at a partner farm, in return for a small allocation of extra-virgin olive oil. A funding-and-marketing vehicle, not an operating company that sells a replant contract to a 30-hectare grower. olivami.com
Polo AntiXylella (alliance of Coldiretti, Unaprol, and CAI Agromec) — provides "certified plants, technical assistance and agronomic consultancy" through its member networks. An advisory layer over the same grower / nursery / contractor fragmentation, not an integrated crew-based service contractor with its own fleet, planting teams, and fixed-price-per-hectare contract format.

None of these is an operating company a Salento olive grower can call this week and book to handle the whole replant from uproot to first irrigation cycle on one bill of works. This is an open opportunity for founders. The demand is concrete: 115,000 hectares of dead grove still untouched, 8,000 applications in the funding pipeline, ARIF (Puglia's regional irrigation agency) leaving funded growers waiting over a year for the water hookup while their young trees die of thirst. What is missing is the operator: an Italian outfit with vine-claw excavators (the wide-jaw attachment that pulls dead olive trunks out by the root), trellis-and-drip install crews, certified nursery contracts, an Osservatorio-Fitosanitario paperwork desk, and a fixed-price-per-hectare contract format. If you build, or know, a company that actually runs this shape in Puglia, email contact@aikraft.com and we will list them.

No turn-key replant operator located yet

After a search across Italian-language olive-trade press, Region of Puglia supplier registries, MASAF-recognised replant lists, and adjacent agronomy-services directories, we did not find an Italian company whose product page concretely sells the four-step Salento olive replant — uproot, drip irrigation, certified resistant stock, regulator paperwork — as one fixed-price-per-hectare contract. If you build or know one, email contact@aikraft.com.

No companies listed yet — get on this page. This page is in no-solver-yet mode: we could not find a vendor whose product page concretely sells the full four-step Salento post-Xylella olive replant as one turn-key contract. If you build or know a company that does, write to us and we will list it within 7 business days. If you are already mentioned on this page above and want a correction or removal, that runs through the same channel. Email contact@aikraft.com.

Operators discussing this

Italian olive growers (the small family farms across the Salento) discuss replant practice in closed Coldiretti and CIA member channels, private Facebook groups, and WhatsApp networks rather than open forums; the open-web evidence we have is named-operator voice carried by the regional trade press, plus the Region of Puglia's own status filings. They are the reason this page exists.

«È urgente eliminare gli ulivi secchi rimasti nelle campagne e garantire fondi adeguati per completare il lavoro avviato.»

"It is urgent to uproot the dead olive trees still standing in the fields and to secure adequate funds to finish the work already started."

pugliapress.org — "Xylella, rigenerazione olivi" · regional trade-press named-operator quote — Costantino Carparelli, president of Coldiretti Lecce (the local chapter of Italy's main farmers' association), February 2025.
«Il Salento che rinasce dopo la Xylella: dalla favolosa al bosco con Agrosì.»

"The Salento reborn after Xylella: from the Favolosa olive cultivar to the woodland, with Agrosì." (MASAF national-finalist recognition for the Agrosì farm's resistant-cultivar replant practice, December 2025.)

pugliareporter.com · regional trade-press named-operator profile — Giuseppe Agrosì, Azienda Agricola Agrosì, Supersano (LE).
«Reimpianti ulivi in zona infetta da Xylella: lo stato di attuazione dell'avviso pubblico.»

"Olive replanting in the Xylella-infected zone: status of the public call." (Region of Puglia's official February 2025 implementation report — names the 17% completion figure that anchors this page.)

press.regione.puglia.it · regional-government press office — Region of Puglia, Department of Agriculture.

A four-phase community pass across Italian-language olive-grower forum search, Telegram aggregator queries, public Facebook discovery, and Reddit returned no recurrent open-web operator thread on this specific bottleneck; the largest Italian olive-grower communities ("Olivicoltori d'Italia", "Coltivatori di olivo") are closed Facebook groups. Substitute-trio (Coldiretti named voice, MASAF-recognised operator, Region of Puglia status filing) anchors the demand signal in the absence of an open-web forum trace.

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