The 8th Eurispes Report – Coldiretti – Foundation Observatory on Crime in Agriculture. The data

8TH AGROMAFIA REPORT. EURISPES – COLDIRETTI – FOUNDATION FOR THE OBSERVATORY ON CRIME IN AGRICULTURE AND THE AGRI-FOOD SYSTEM

THE AGROMAFIA BUSINESS RISES TO €25.2 BILLION

From transnational illegal hiring to ‘landless companies’, the new phenomena threatening farms and consumers

The agromafia business has grown to $25.2 billion, practically doubling its turnover in just over a decade, quickly recovering the ground lost during the pandemic and extending its activities to new areas, from illegal hiring to food counterfeiting and adulteration, from control of logistics to the appropriation of agricultural land and public funds, to usury, theft, and cybercrime.

This is the picture outlined in the new Report on Agri-Food Crime in Italy prepared by Eurispes, Coldiretti, and the Foundation for the Observatory on Crime in Agriculture and the Agri-Food System, presented at the Palazzo Rospigliosi Congress Center, headquarters of Coldiretti, in the presence of, among others, the Secretary General and President of Coldiretti, Vincenzo Gesmundo and Ettore Prandini, Alberto Mattiacci, President of the Scientific Committee of Eurispes, Francesco Lollobrigida, Minister of Agriculture, of Food Sovereignty and Forests, Francesco Paolo Sisto, Deputy Minister of Justice, Roberto Gualtieri, Mayor of Rome, Giovanni Melillo, National Anti-Mafia and Anti-Terrorism Prosecutor, Chiara Colosimo, President of the Parliamentary Anti-Mafia Commission, Jacopo Morrone, President of the Bicameral Commission of Inquiry into illegal activities in the waste cycle and other environmental and agri-food crimes.

The agri-food sector has become increasingly attractive to criminal organizations which, as illustrated in the Report, are increasingly attempting to extend their tentacles to multiple food-related assets. One example is the exploitation of immigrants through illegal hiring practices, managed by Italian and foreign criminal networks. But agromafias use the loopholes in the bureaucracy to promote illegal credit, acquire farms, and launder money, while entrepreneurs suffer threats and damage to force them to sell their land and businesses, partly due to the crisis linked to international tensions and the increase in production costs that has characterized recent years, weakening many businesses.

The main targets are public funds and control of markets and contracts, with the help of complacent professionals and false documents. But the infiltration extends to catering, fruit and vegetable markets, and large-scale distribution, not sparing outright food fraud, with adulterated or unlabeled products, often sold in discount stores. The sectors most affected are wine, oil, animal feed, and rice, with the use of banned pesticides and false organic certifications from imports from Eastern Europe. A separate chapter is represented by the spread of Italian Sounding and packaging fraud.

“The international crisis and climate change are putting the agri-food chain in crisis, which appears to be unbalanced in favor of distribution and penalizes producers,” emphasizes Gian Maria Fara, President of Eurispes. ”Many farms, despite operating in the context of the success of Made in Italy, are struggling to cope with rising costs, reduced yields, prices imposed by large-scale retailers, and difficulty in accessing credit. Thanks to their liquidity, mafias offer usurious loans or buy up farms in difficulty, following a model similar to land grabbing. This new strategy targets land and primary production directly, extending control throughout the supply chain: from production to public funds to exploited labor.”

“For Coldiretti, the agri-food supply chain starts with the agricultural worker and ends with the consumer: defending it from the mafia also means guaranteeing fair prices throughout the entire chain,” emphasizes Coldiretti Secretary General Vincenzo Gesmundo. If consumers buy products at rock-bottom prices, and if certain sectors of large-scale distribution or industry buy and sell below cost, someone pays for that shortfall—and it is almost always farmers and agricultural workers. We have been waiting ten years for the approval of the bill drafted by Prosecutor Caselli, which no one had yet had the courage to do, but which the current government has had the political determination to implement, strengthening for the first time the tools available to the police and the judiciary against crime in the agri-food sector. We now call on Parliament to proceed with rapid final approval, overcoming the cross-party resistance coming from sections of big industry controlled by multinationals and segments of large-scale distribution,” he concludes.

“Coldiretti has always been at the forefront of the fight against the agromafias, which today are targeting the wider agri-food supply chain, whose value has risen to a record €620 billion, with exports worth €69.1 billion,” said Coldiretti National President Ettore Prandini. ”It was the first and only agricultural organization to strongly support the law on illegal hiring. Similarly, we denounce exploitation in every part of the world because the problem of agromafias is not only Italian, as the report shows. It ranges from transnational caporalato to child exploitation, which we are also fighting with international agreements based on the principle of reciprocity. Europe should focus its attention on these phenomena using the Italian model of controls and enforcement.”

THE CRIME OF AGRO-PIRACY: FINALLY A COMPREHENSIVE CRIMINAL RESPONSE

The presentation of the report coincides with the approval of a bill introduced by Minister Lollobrigida that adds a new section to the Criminal Code dedicated to crimes against the agri-food sector, incorporating the proposals of the so-called “Caselli Law.” The bill introduces important measures to protect the agri-food chain and consumers, with a particular focus on combating fraud. Among the main new features is the introduction of the crime of food fraud, which punishes all deceptive conduct in the production and marketing of food, especially when it harms consumers in terms of the quality, quantity, or origin of products. The crime of trading in food with false markings is also established to combat false labeling and misleading information, as well as agri-piracy, aimed at those who commit food fraud in a systematic and organized manner. The picture is completed by stricter measures to protect PDO and PGI products, the possibility of donating seized food for welfare purposes, and the introduction of penalties proportionate to company turnover to ensure greater fairness.

TRANSNATIONAL CAPORALATO AND LANDLESS ENTERPRISES

A significant new development highlighted in the report is the emergence of transnational organizations between Italy and non-European countries, which act as informal agencies for the illegal recruitment of agricultural workers. Recent investigations have revealed how these networks, also exploiting immigration decrees, organize the arrival of workers from the Indian subcontinent (especially India and Bangladesh) in exchange for large sums of money. Once in Italy, these workers are exploited, deprived of protection, and forced to work to pay off their debts, often in other sectors, while agricultural entrepreneurs find themselves without labor.

This mechanism is based mainly on the phenomenon of ‘landless enterprises’. These are entities that take the legal form of cooperatives and offer themselves to farms as suppliers of workers for various activities, especially seasonal ones. Workers are required to formally join the cooperative, but this does not actually bring them any benefits. On the contrary, wages can be up to 40% lower than those provided for in national or provincial contracts, without the knowledge of the farms themselves, which pay for the service directly to the cooperative.

FROM EUROPE TO CHINA, A GLOBAL NETWORK OF AGROMAFIAS

While Italy has equipped itself with a state-of-the-art system of sanctions and controls, there is a risk that the ‘agromafia’ phenomenon is underestimated in the rest of Europe. This danger is all the more serious when one considers the now supranational dimension of criminal organizations. The report denounces that the identification of agromafias in Europe is extremely deficient. In addition to Italy, organized criminal groups operating in the primary sector have been identified in Austria, Belgium, Germany, Slovakia, Spain, and the Netherlands. However, their activities are not systematically monitored and catalogued. The case of activities linked to the Chinese mafia deserves special mention, as they are reportedly increasing their interest in the agricultural sector through the purchase of land and small businesses, as well as in logistics.

THE SCOURGE OF ITALIAN SOUNDING AND THE DECEPTIONS OF THE CUSTOMS CODE

Another insidious phenomenon is Italian Sounding, i.e., the trade in products that have Italian names or distinctive signs on their packaging but are not actually produced in Italy. The most obvious case is that of international agricultural piracy, of which Parmesan, a clone of Parmigiano Reggiano and Grana Padano, or the various imitations of Prosecco (the latest being Calsecco from California) are the best-known symbols. This market has reached a record value of around €120 billion, almost double that of total agri-food exports. But Italian farmers and consumers are also being harmed by Italian Sounding, a gray area where, thanks to the principle of final transformation contained in the current Customs Code, it is possible to pass off as Italian food that which is not Italian. This scandal has brought over ten thousand Coldiretti farmers to the borders, from Brenner to the ports of Civitavecchia, Salerno, and Bari, to demand a change of pace, with a petition for a popular law that guarantees the introduction of mandatory country of origin labeling on all food products sold in the European Union.

 

 

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