The made-in-Italy supply chain is attracting the main clans in ever greater numbers, both in the north and in the south: counterfeiting and exploitation are the biggest problems.
The total annual turnover of agromafie has risen to 21.8 billion euros, a jump of 30 per cent in the last year alone — and this estimate is still largely an underestimate, since the proceeds from investments made in various parts of the world by criminal organisations inevitably remain outside the calculation. This is explained by the Rapporto Agromafie 2017 produced by Coldiretti, Eurispes and the Observatory on Crime in Agriculture and the Agri-food System, according to which there is a rise in racket activity, usury, vandalism, illegal grazing and extortion in rural areas, while in cities, quietly, traditional greengrocers and florists have almost completely disappeared — the former replaced by Egyptians and the latter by Indians and Pakistanis. The doubt the report raises is that such organisational effectiveness may often be the product of a recently acquired mafia vocation for marketing.
These figures lead the vice-president of the Consiglio superiore per la magistratura Giovanni Legnini and Justice Minister Andrea Orlando to state that "if these phenomena are becoming international, it follows naturally that the tools, the regulations and the norms must also tend towards a supranational dimension. A European prosecutor's office is needed; Italy is on the front line in this battle, even if unfortunately this effort is not supported by all European countries." From the Piromalli clan's infiltration of the fruit and vegetable sector, to Matteo Messina Denaro's extra-virgin olive oil, to the imposition of buffalo mozzarella sales by Sandokan's son from the Casalesi clan, and to the 'ndrangheta's control of the meat trade and Totò Riina's family's control of the fruit and vegetable trade, the most notorious criminal clans are dividing up the food business, getting their hands on the flagship products of Made in Italy.
The food supply chain — covering production, transport, distribution and sale — has all the characteristics needed to attract the interest of organisations that have discovered the advantages of globalisation, new technologies, and the economy and finance 3.0. On the agri-food supply chain front, the mafias, having subcontracted to foot soldiers the burden of organising and managing caporalato and numerous other forms of exploitation, are now influencing the market by setting crop prices, managing transport and distribution, controlling entire supermarket chains and restaurants (estimated at over 5,000 premises), with a more widespread presence in Rome, Milan and major cities, the export of our real or fake Made in Italy, the creation abroad of italian sounding production hubs, and the from-scratch creation of retail distribution networks.
The ranking of Italian provinces by the extent and intensity of the agromafie phenomenon in 2016, while showing a concentration of the phenomenon primarily in the South, highlights the presence in the top ten of significant northern realities such as Genoa (mainly due to a widespread system of counterfeiting and adulteration in the olive oil supply chain) and Verona (due to the phenomenon of importing pigs from northern Europe and fraudulently labelling them as Italian, and the adulteration of alcoholic drinks and spirits such as the renowned local grappa), ranking second and third respectively after Reggio Calabria for trafficking aimed at the lucrative fake Made in Italy business. Agriculture Minister Maurizio Martina warned that "we must never lower our guard with regard to the entire agri-food supply chain: unfortunately, the issues related to the infiltration of organised crime into agriculture no longer show any difference between the north and south of the country, and no territory can claim to be safe from this threat."
From Asian rice to Chinese tinned tomatoes, from South American fruit and vegetables to African produce on sale in Italian supermarkets, through to flowers from Kenya — almost one in five agri-food products arriving in Italy from abroad does not comply with the regulations on worker protection — starting with those on caporalato — in force in our country. It is estimated that over 30% of the agri-food products consumed in Italy are grown or reared abroad, with a marked increase in recent decades in imports from non-EU countries where the same social rights as in the European Union do not apply. Rice, tinned tomatoes, olive oil, fresh fruit and vegetables, cane sugar, roses and palm oil are just some of the foreign products arriving in Italy that are often the fruit of an "invisible caporalato" that goes unnoticed simply because it takes place in distant countries that exploit child labour — which, in agriculture, affects around 100 million children according to the International Labour Organization.
