‘Working here is hell’: latest death of farm worker in 40C heat shocks Italy

Rome: Italy has been shocked by reports of the “brutal” treatment of migrants working on farms across the country and the death of a flower picker in temperatures of about 40C (104F). Tens of thousands of migrants have been taking to fields to pick tomatoes and other crops across Italy at the same time as the country has been engulfed in consecutive heatwaves since the middle of June.

The Italian Meteorological Society said average summer temperatures in Italy between June and August have increased by 1.5C over the past 30 years, from 1994 to 2023.

Sweltering heat has brought a new and deadly risk to low-paid workers toiling outdoors to pick fruit and vegetables.

Dalvir Singh, who worked on a flower farm, is thought to have died from a combination of extreme summer heat and a heavy workload. The 54-year-old was found dead on 16 August in a field near the city of Latina in central Italy. Colleagues who spoke to the Guardian said that he had never been sick and was a “kind man who always worked hard”.

He sent back regular remittances to his family in Punjab, in the north of India, but friends said Singh had intended to return home within the next few years as he found it increasingly difficult to work in the fields every day as he grew older. His son and son-in-law are now trying to take his body back to India.

Migrant workers from Mali return from working in the fields and head back to the Torretta Antonacci ghetto, in Foggia, where they live. Photograph: Stefania Prandi

The results of an autopsy are expected next month with local prosecutors still investigating the circumstances of Singh’s death and whether precautions for workers exposed to heat were taken by his employer.

It is unknown how many workers have been injured or died due to extreme heat in Italy this summer. But the country is estimated to have had the highest number of fatalities in Europe as a result of last year’s high temperatures – more than 12,000.

The Italian health and safety body has said in the past that accidents at work attributable to the heat are almost never classified as such, rather as fainting, falls or something similar.

Most of those working in fields in the summer heat are migrants from countries including India and sub-Saharan Africa. Despite the billions of euros in revenue generated by Italy’s lucrative food industry, harvesting roles come with low wages, long hours and a lack of employment rights.

Many workers live in ghettoes and abandoned buildings, with their employment controlled by gangmasters who recruit and keep part of their wages, say unions.

Activists in Italy said bosses and gangmasters who exploit workers have no problem forcing them to work in any heat condition, with many doing shifts lasting 10-14 hours a day.

In July, Italian police described more than two dozen Indian migrants they rescued from a farm in central Italy as having been “reduced to slavery” through debts, the confiscation of their passports and dilapidated housing. The previous month, a farm worker died when he was allegedly left on a road by his employer after an accident in which his arm was severed.

“When extreme heat is correlated with criminal activities in agriculture, it is clear that the tragedies we have been [predicting] for so long are actually occurring,” says Fabio Ciconte, the director of the food and farming NGO Terra.

At least 30 people have fainted in Agro Pontino (an area of reclaimed farmland in central Italy about 40 miles from Rome) due to the heat since June, says Marco Omizzolo, a sociologist at La Sapienza University of Rome.

Instead of calling ambulances and making medical reports, the employer or gangmaster will place the worker in the shade or give them cold water or coffee before allowing them to continue work.

“Employers and gangmasters hide everything in order to avoid legal problems,” says Omizzolo.

Another death with parallels to Singh’s was that of Famakan Dembele, 28, a tomato picker in the southern Italian province of Foggia, who died on 7 August last year. The Guardian visited Foggia recently to report on conditions.

It had been a scorching hot day, former colleagues of Dembele say. After he had finished his shift, Dembele had gone to wash in one of the shared bathrooms in a ghetto, Torretta Antonacci, not far from Foggia, where he lived along with about 2,000 other farm workers.

The mostly African migrants in the ghetto had little in the way of facilities. No running water, no electricity and no sanitation. Just a water tank refilled daily by a lorry. And makeshift housing put together from recycled materials.

The Mali-born Dembele had only arrived at the ghetto from Paris a few days earlier. He had been drawn to Foggia, like thousands of other migrants, to work on the region’s tomato harvest, with much of it canned and sent to shops and supermarkets across the UK and Europe.

At about 2pm, other workers say they saw Dembele lying in the shade underneath an olive tree. It began to rain and his co-workers approached to see why he was not moving despite the water pouring from the sky.

In the Torretta Antonacci ghetto, a woman carries a container of drinking water to her shack. Up to five litres of water is consumed every day by the field workers. Photograph: Stefania Prandi

An ambulance was called, but witnesses say he was declared dead and a white sheet was spread over his body. His body remained under the olive tree until the medical examiner arrived and he was taken to the morgue.

The cause of death remains unknown, but workers the Guardian spoke to insist he died from extreme heat and exhaustion. Workers are usually paid by the number of boxes or crates of tomatoes they pick, and make about €35 (£29) a day.

“After Dembele’s death, we all think twice before proceeding into the hottest hours. We can also drink five two-litre bottles in 24 hours,” says a 32-year-old worker from Guinea-Bissau who wished to remain anonymous.

A judicial file on Dembele’s death was opened and closed at a court in Foggia, but requests for information there and with the local health authority by the Guardian were turned down.

“In some cases, the fatigue is so severe that people bleed for days when they go to the bathroom,” says Francesco Caruso, a university researcher and union support worker. “Except for those with contracts, of which there are few, it is almost impossible to work every day.”

Another former colleague, Daniel, who has spent many years working on farms in France and Italy says working under the summer sun has become a curse. “If they poured money on me and said, ‘Well, now the tomato field is yours, you have to work on it every day,’ I would refuse. Working in such conditions is hell, not life.”

Climate scientists have warned that vulnerable migrant workers are among those most at risk from extreme heat in Europe and the rest of the world.

“The people who die [from heat stress] are the people we care least about in society,” says Friederike Otto from the Grantham Institute for Climate Change and the Environment at Imperial.