Dossier on Xylella – Very serious act of scientific obscurantism
Dossier on Xylella – Very serious act of scientific obscurantism
Xylella fastidiosa (Wells, Raju et al., 1986) is a Gram negative bacterium of the Gammaproteobacteria class of the Xanthomonadaceae family; this bacterium lives and reproduces inside the conductive apparatus of the raw lymph (the so-called xylematic vessels) which inhibits the absorption of water and other nutrients with the gradual drying of the affected plants. A bacterium that threatens the olive groves and therefore the oil market in Puglia and that scientists now, after unexplained measures not supported by sufficient scientific data, hope to fight or oppose with natural remedies. Since 2015, as is known, it has been decreed that every plant within a radius of 100 meters from those affected by Xylella fastidiosa, must be eradicated, even if it is not ill. For this reason more than 5,000 km of land (an area equal to 3 times that of London) was classified as infected with the prospect of having to eradicate about 11 million olive trees. In fact, by decree of the Italian government, the EU and the government of Rome have allocated millions of euros for the “study of the phenomenon” and for the eradication of diseased trees.
In 2015, France, as a precaution, banned the importation of products from Puglia that could be carriers of the pathogen, with an economic damage of one billion euro. But the studies of EFSA (European Food Safety Authority) on the Xylella based themselves on the information of the CNR of Bari, but not on a scientific experimentation conducted according to orthodox epistemological criteria; in fact these results have never appeared in international scientific journals. In short, in the face of such a drastic provision and two years after the first and only “pilot study” of the EFSA, a peer reviewed study has not yet come out, thus lacking the suitability for scientific publication. Very serious act of scientific obscurantism and unconstitutional will. I remember here that to have the certification of scientific validity a data must be verified, proven and contradicted by several parties. Think a little about Einstein’s Theory of Relativity, how many years passed before accepting it as valid. On the Xylella, seen instead not. We are in the high Middle Ages.
There are in fact cases of olive trees that have been taken back, healed, even with empirical methods and no one has flashed the idea of making it the subject of a thorough scientific study before two million trees of Puglia were destroyed and that the face of the Region and the its age-old ecosystem collapsed. Moreover, scientific systems have not been implemented to verify why some plants are resistant and others not. The natural procedure for verifying the natural selection processes that take place on all plant and animal diseases has not been followed. An inexplicable case of scientific neglect or a true pathology of the Italian and international scientific system? Research has not known the development that should have allowed experts from all over the world to find solutions and investigate the many existing empirical experiments that seem to give concrete answers to the care of the trees. The thing that then sounds an alarm bell is that the last official monitoring (of March 2017), carried out on about 158 thousand hectares of land (with verification in the laboratory of 150 thousand plants, ie about one per hectare), had given the certainty that in an area about 30 kilometers from the Adriatic to the Ionian and about 50 wide, the area was clear of Xylella.
The result was that out of about 150 thousand plants analyzed, only 200 would have been positive for Xylella (0.13%). Yet on the basis of this threshold (I remember here that the minimum thresholds of intervention exist in any plant disease and this is not a threshold that justifies this type of intervention) The EU has taken the decision to cut everything and propose the replacement with plants resistant to Xylella. Moreover, the monitoring carried out by the Puglia Region indicated that Xylella was present only in 6.5 percent of the 1,536 sick plants sampled in the infected area; too little to establish the certainty of the correlation between bacterium and disease and therefore between Xylella and desiccation.
Moreover, other “independent” researchers working in Puglia are convinced that there are many other factors in the desiccation of trees in the region, and that the most effective way to combat it is in the use of natural remedies used in ancient times by farmers, where the Xylella It is probably present in Puglia for a long time and that many host plants are well and live together as stated by Dr. Margherita D’Amico, who directs a team of expert bacteriologists who are looking for a cure.
With this consideration agrees Professor Marco Scortichini (bacteriologist at the University of Caserta in Caserta), who has conducted numerous studies on Xylella agrees: “Natural remedies work. The only thing to do when a bacterium has spread is to find a way to live with and strengthen the natural defenses of trees so that they are less vulnerable “.
This statement is proven in the field of the fact that many trees entrusted to its care by some fruitful farmers are blooming again and will bear fruit in October. Similar results occurred for other trees infected by Xilella near the Apulian towns of Avetrana and Martina Franca, in the southern province of Taranto.
In this regard, mention should be made of the experience of a farmer, Mr. Ivano Gioffreda, President of the Associazione Spazi Popolari, who for some years has been experimenting with about 100 olive trees that showed signs of desiccation and that have been entirely saved: the trees they are flourishing, alive and they are fine.
At this point, as someone said, the question arises: why are we increasingly implementing summary decision-making processes and so outside the rules of nature? Do we want to exterminate more or less imaginary diseases or human freedom that has coexisted with Nature for thousands of years? I think you answered the answer yourself!
Guido Bissanti