Italian Farmers Take to The Streets Against War in Ukraine

As the dra­matic esca­la­tion of the Russian inva­sion of Ukraine led to the loss of human life and destruc­tion, farm­ers in Italy spoke out for peace.

The major pro­duc­ers’ orga­ni­za­tions warned that not only does the con­flict endan­gers world sta­bil­ity, but it also jeop­ar­dizes the future of hun­dreds of thou­sands of agri­cul­ture work­ers.

Farmers, ranch­ers and fish­er­men took the streets in Genoa, Bari, Venezia and Verona to demon­strate against the war and for more help for the agri­cul­tural sec­tor, the econ­omy and jobs.

They held up signs say­ing: ​“Putin let’s make peace” (in ref­er­ence to Russian President Vladimir Putin), ​“Put flow­ers in your guns,” ​“Stop the war that increases hunger” and ​“Let’s empty the arse­nals, fill the gra­naries.”

“The Covid-19 pan­demic has already led us to a sce­nario of hoard­ing, price increases and spec­u­la­tion that is putting our busi­nesses to the test,” said Gianluca Boeri and Bruno Rivarossa, respec­tively pres­i­dent and con­fed­eral del­e­gate of Coldiretti Liguria.

“In this period of recov­ery, it is unac­cept­able that farm­ers, olive grow­ers, fish­er­men and flori­cul­tur­ists find them­selves work­ing below-cost or being forced to reduce their pro­duc­tion or shut down the green­houses,” they added.

“The war in Ukraine rep­re­sents yet another threat to our econ­omy, with sanc­tions and embar­goes that increase the costs of raw mate­ri­als, block trade, dis­rupt mar­kets and fur­ther encour­age spec­u­la­tion,” Boeri and Rivarossa con­tin­ued.

According to a Coldiretti analy­sis of data from the Italian National Institute of Statistics (Istat), the war unleashed by Putin poses a threat to the Italian agri-food exports to Russia and Ukraine, which reached over €1 bil­lion in 2021, with sales to the two coun­tries amount­ing to €670 mil­lion and €350 mil­lion, respec­tively.

“No to war as a res­o­lu­tion of dis­putes between nations” is the appeal released by Donne in Campo, the wom­en’s asso­ci­a­tion of the Italian Confederation of Farmers (CIA), fol­low­ing the con­tin­ued fight­ing and bom­bard­ment of Ukraine over the last few days.

“The global cri­sis trig­gered by the pan­demic must lead to a change in the scale of val­ues, in the deci­sive rejec­tion of oppres­sion and the search for last­ing bal­ance,” said the pres­i­dent of Donne in Campo, Pina Terenzi.

“We are very wor­ried about the inten­si­fi­ca­tion of the con­flict because agri­cul­ture would pay a very high price and, with it, as always hap­pens in war sce­nar­ios, the whole of soci­ety,” she added.

The CIA women recalled the prin­ci­ple, clearly con­firmed by the Italian con­sti­tu­tion, that is today more rel­e­vant than ever: no demo­c­ra­tic gov­ern­ment can ignore the assump­tion that the path to real progress and sus­tain­able devel­op­ment can only be based on the capac­ity to avoid the use of force in defence of oppos­ing inter­ests.

“We, there­fore, believe that the European Union, in its effort to take the lead in over­com­ing the cri­sis, can play an impor­tant role in defend­ing the bal­ance on the con­ti­nent and reaf­firm­ing its com­mit­ment to peace and pros­per­ity,” Terenzi con­cluded.

• Coldiretti
• Italian Confederation of Farmers