Coronavirus Epidemic Hits Italy's Agriculture Sector

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As the num­ber of con­firmed coro­n­avirus cases surges to 400 in Italy, the country’s agri­cul­tural indus­try is already feel­ing the impacts of the epi­demic.

Harvesting, pack­ag­ing and trans­porta­tion have all been deeply affected by strict mea­sures intro­duced by the Italian gov­ern­ment to con­tain the spread of the virus.

To make things worse, sev­eral European coun­tries have started ask­ing Italian sup­pli­ers for addi­tional and more com­pre­hen­sive cer­ti­fi­ca­tions on imported Italian goods. Others have enforced reg­u­la­tions that could reduce the avail­abil­ity of for­eign sea­sonal work­ers ahead of the next har­vest.

Restrictive mea­sures have been mostly applied in the north of the coun­try. Just south of Milan, the epi­demic led the gov­ern­ment to define a ​‘red zone’ — eleven munic­i­pal­i­ties no one can access or leave.

Milan itself and sev­eral other munic­i­pal­i­ties in the Lombardia and Emilia-Romagna regions were declared ​‘yel­low zones,’ where ​“max­i­mum cau­tion” is urged for all cit­i­zens and work­ers.

That region is one of Italy’s most impor­tant indus­trial and agri­cul­tural dis­tricts, where mea­sures of restricted move­ment are affect­ing the abil­ity to process, pack­age and dis­patch prod­ucts for domes­tic and inter­na­tional mar­kets.

The farm­ers asso­ci­a­tion, Coldiretti, under­lined how hard the agri­cul­ture indus­try could be hit if the sea­sonal for­eign work­ers could not come to Italian fields.

“The four­teen-day quar­an­tine enforced by the Romanian Health Ministry con­cerns those who reach Romania from the Veneto or Lombardia regions or those who trav­eled by plane in the last two weeks,” Coldiretti said in a state­ment. ​“A deci­sion that drove many Romanian work­ers to aban­don work plans in Italy just before the spring sea­son, when the agri­cul­tural activ­i­ties in the field begin every­where.”

However, in spite of travel lim­i­ta­tions and the threat of dis­ease, some work­ers plan on com­ing to the region any­way when the work begins.

“I was here last spring and I will be here this year as well, and I am quite sure that many of my fel­low coun­try­men will do the same,” Stelian Lungu, a Romanian worker in cen­tral Italy, told Olive Oil Times. ​“It does not depend on the virus, it depends on the chance to find a job. Of course, things can always change but, as long as there are jobs avail­able, they will come no mat­ter what.”

The sce­nario could change, depend­ing on how effec­tive the adopted mea­sures will prove at stop­ping the epi­demic.

Also at stake are Italy’s agri­cul­tural exports, which in 2019 accounted for one-quar­ter of all agribusi­ness rev­enue, accord­ing to Coldiretti.

“We can not accept the fur­ther cer­ti­fi­ca­tions for Italian goods requested by some national author­i­ties, because there is no risk of infec­tion what­so­ever in han­dling food and pack­ages,” Teresa Bellanova, the Italian min­is­ter of agri­cul­ture, said.

She argued that the addi­tional require­ments being made by some European coun­tries are ille­gal.

“We are com­mit­ted at every level to avert any block­ade against Italian exports,” she said. ​“It rep­re­sents unfair com­pe­ti­tion, it must be denounced and imme­di­ately halted.”

Action has been deemed urgent by the Italian author­i­ties. Several com­mer­cial ports have already encoun­tered prob­lems in unload­ing Italian freighters in part due to the ports’ own per­son­nel not will­ing to meet with their Italian coun­ter­parts and the lack of med­ical sup­port in these types of import and export oper­a­tions.

What hap­pens next is unpre­dictable, but the pro­duc­tion chain — the back­bone of the Italian agribusi­ness sec­tor — is already try­ing to assess the dam­ages.

Every farm is affected by the epi­demic. Even the iconic farm­houses in Tuscany, land of olive oil and wine, are now fac­ing a mass-can­cel­la­tion of reser­va­tions by inter­na­tional guests.

Nobody knows when the emer­gency will be over and those uncer­tain­ties do not help. Many across the sec­tor believe some form of sup­port from the gov­ern­ment will be needed by farm­ers and added-value com­pa­nies.

All stake­hold­ers mean­while are look­ing to the European Union to find a com­mon strat­egy in deal­ing with the virus and its con­se­quences.

• Italian Ministry of Agriculture


• Coldiretti