Research Scientist Luigi Ponti

On Olive Oil with Curtis Cord

Record-breaking droughts, fruit flies that survive unusually mild winters to ravage in the spring, and pathogen outbreaks, like the one in Puglia that has claimed more than a million olive trees. It might seem like climate change could spell the end of the olive oil world, but not so fast, says Luigi Ponti, a research scientist at Italy’s National Agency for New Technologies, Energy and Sustainable Economic Development. His research on the effect of warmer temperatures on the olive sector has been published in scientific journals and provides a valuable framework for continued studies on this important topic. And like so many complicated issues, when we ask, what will climate change mean to olive oil producers around the world? The short answer is: well, that depends.