Italy: Migrants responsible for at least one third of food grown in Puglia

Rome: Migrant workers are responsible for producing at least one third of the food produced in the southern Puglia region of Italy, said Italian farmers’ association Coldiretti recently.

In the Puglia region of southern Italy, “almost a third of Made in Italy food products are produced by foreign workers, with 22,314 workers from around the world working regularly in agriculture, equal to 10 percent of all non-EU agricultural workers in the country,” the Puglia branch of the Italian farmers association Coldiretti Puglia said in a February 11 statement.

It went on to underscore that, “foreign workers are highly represented in the agricultural sector,” and that, “despite the gradual drop over the past five years, they remain essential in Puglia for tree crops, where they account for 53.8 percent (fruit and viticulture), and 17.7 percent in horticulture (strawberries, melons, salads, tomatoes, and radicchio).”

“Almost 88 percent of non-EU farmhands are employed on a seasonal basis and account for 10 percent of contracted workers regularly employed in agriculture,” the statement noted.

“These are workers that often have for years been collaborating with Italian agricultural firms and who every year cross the border to return to their home countries,” it added.

“This is a need that has become more pressing due to the lack of Italian manpower and depends on the calendar for harvests.” This “significant presence” of foreign workers “is not however enough to meet the needs of agricultural firms, especially due to some gaps in the current regulations, starting from the click day mechanism [on which applications can be made online to get entrance visas to Italy, Ed.], with small quotas that are not updated in relation to the seasonal needs of the agricultural sector.”

Coldiretti Puglia went on to point out: “It often happens, in fact, that workers arrive when the harvesting for which they had been requested has already ended.”

The quotas set aside for the agricultural sector are significant, and in Italy’s agricultural sector about 35 percent of the workers are immigrants.

“To overcome the current difficulties, it is important to shift to a direct, controlled management of migration flows,” believes the association.

“The latest modifications of regulations on the immigration decree are an important step towards simplification and respect for the timeline of workers’ entrance [into the country], which should be implemented with greater involvement of employer associations and consulates. In this way, it would also be easier to discover any instances of labor exploitation,” Coldiretti Puglia concluded.