For years, labour exploitation has been a plague of the Saluzzo fruit district. Now something is changing, between protections for farmworkers and new production philosophies.
For Livio Craveri, 33 years old, wine is not an indispensable product. That is why making wine cannot be an end in itself, but must leave something behind, in social and environmental terms. In 2019 he founded, together with friends Elia and Giovanni, the agricultural company Braccia Rese, nestled on the Piedmontese hills of Saluzzo, in the province of Cuneo. And from the very first day, this philosophy has charted the course of their production. Braccia Rese cultivates forgotten native grape varieties with the aim of rediscovering their value. With the side project Craveri&Lamberti, it produces ciders from apples, apricots, peaches, plums and other fruit iconic to the area, redefining the boundaries and conventions of fermentation and giving a second life to damaged produce that would otherwise end up in the bin. In the vineyard and the cellar there is no room for chemical and synthetic products, so as to minimise emissions linked to the entire winemaking process. And with the project "Errante", the company dedicates a portion of its revenue to supporting foreign-born agricultural labourers who populate the area. "There is a great deal of talk about labour exploitation in southern Italy, but the same problem exists in the prosperous Saluzzo too, and it is always very hard to speak about it openly. For us it felt natural from the start to do our part," underlines Livio Craveri.
Over the past decade, the Saluzzo fruit district, one of the most important in Italy, has made the front pages of national newspapers for the difficult working and living conditions of its farmworkers, who are almost entirely of sub-Saharan African origin. There have been investigations, trials and convictions for labour exploitation. In recent years, however, a network of public actors, social organisations and private companies has joined forces to combat the problem, but also to assert new production models that are alien to the unhealthy mechanisms of large-scale retail and grounded in social and environmental sustainability. In this way, the Saluzzo area has become a case study, a model. But the challenge is not yet won.
Driving through the roads around Saluzzo on a late June afternoon, there is a constant flow of people on bicycles. They come almost entirely from sub-Saharan Africa and are returning from work in the fruit fields, where it is harvest time and they work as seasonal labourers.
Saluzzo, in the province of Cuneo, is a small town of 17,000 inhabitants located in the south-western part of Piedmont, at the mouth of the Valle Varaita. It is the main hub of a fruit district spanning 44 municipalities, the second largest in Italy, after that of Trentino Alto-Adige. In the Saluzzo area, apples, pears, peaches, apricots and kiwis are grown, along with other fresh produce destined mostly for export. The total cultivated surface area is approximately 16,000 hectares, the companies involved number around 5,000, the permanent workforce stands at 7,000, to which are added approximately 14,000 seasonal workers for the harvest. As highlighted by the association Terra! in its 2025 report, "from 2009 to the present day, seasonal workers, particularly of sub-Saharan African origin, have quadrupled in number. In 2023 in Saluzzo approximately 10,500 contracts were activated, largely fixed-term, with the classification of agricultural labourer. They are predominantly young men under the age of 35, many of them applicants for international protection".
The living and working conditions of these people have been difficult from the outset. The law does not require employers to provide accommodation for seasonal workers, who have therefore found themselves year after year living outdoors, in disused buildings or in the parks of the district's various municipalities. For a long time, farmworkers occupied for instance the square adjacent to the Foro Boario in Saluzzo, in veritable shanty towns built from cardboard, plastic sheeting and other makeshift materials. This was the consequence of wages already meagre under the national collective agreement, compounded by the spread of irregular working arrangements.
"Employers reproduced the narrative of small producers enslaved by large-scale retail (GDO) and the race to the bottom that loses a great deal of money and forces cost-cutting," explains Elena Pagnoni, an operator at Caritas Saluzzo. "This did not translate so much into wage cuts as into the spread of grey labour, that is, a form of employment combining regular and irregular elements, with non-transparent pay slips and declared working days fewer than those actually worked." Large-scale retail (GDO) has been one of the main drivers of farmworker exploitation in the Saluzzo area, with cost reduction pushed to the extreme and practices such as "open-price delivery", which saw the actual selling price of goods set months after delivery, slashing profit margins for agricultural businesses and paving the way for new spirals of labour exploitation in order to cut production costs.
Employers reproduced the narrative of small producers enslaved by large-scale retail (GDO) and the race to the bottom that loses a great deal of money and forces cost-cutting.
Elena Pagnoni, Caritas Saluzzo
Among the other problems that emerged in the area: the figure of intermediaries who recruit farmworkers, managing work in the fields and pocketing a share of their meagre wages. And the practice of registering companies with Ateco codes different from the agricultural one, so as to employ farmworkers (also) in the fields under fictitious contracts in the commercial and logistics sectors.
Over the past decade, the Saluzzo fruit district has been a glaring example that labour exploitation is not a problem exclusive to southern Italy. For a long time there were attempts to deny a systematic presence of illegal exploitation in the fields of northern Italy, but at a certain point reality had to be confronted — a reality made up of reports, testimonies, investigations, trials and even judicial convictions.
In 2020, after years of complaints, the first trial for gang labour exploitation began in the Saluzzo district, and in 2022 convictions were handed down to Moumouni Tassembedo, accused of illegally recruiting numerous workers of African origin, and to Diego Gastaldi and Marilena Bongiasca, who headed a farm in the municipality of Lagnasco that exploited these workers. It was a landmark ruling, the first of its kind in north-west Italy, which forced everyone to confront reality. Yet positive change had already been under way in the Saluzzo area for years.
From the early 2010s onwards, as the influx of farmworkers from sub-Saharan Africa grew, the Caritas of Saluzzo put in place some basic legal, trade-union and housing support services. This was an embryonic social infrastructure that developed over the following years, as local public institutions also began to act, particularly on the housing front. In 2018, the municipality of Saluzzo converted a former military barracks into a reception centre capable of housing hundreds of agricultural workers, many of whom had been accustomed to sleeping on the streets or in makeshift shelters. In 2020, the Covid-19 pandemic brought these initiatives to a halt, but a new model of dispersed reception was subsequently developed and remains in force today. "A memorandum of understanding was signed by 11 municipalities in the Saluzzo fruit district, which committed to providing municipal facilities and spaces to be used for housing seasonal workers," explains Elena Pagnoni of Caritas Saluzzo. These reception arrangements, which have made more than 200 beds available (with more to come thanks to new funding from the PNRR), have been conditional on the presentation of a contract and have involved the payment of nominal fees: €1.50 per day for workers and €4.50 for their employers, so as to foster a sense of responsibility and encourage a culture of hospitality and legality among all stakeholders.
The Caritas of Saluzzo, through its spin-off project Saluzzo migrante, has established a range of other services: a canteen, serving around a hundred people per meal; showers; a left-luggage facility; a shop distributing work clothing; a bicycle repair workshop, which fixes bikes and provides them to farmworkers so they have their own means of transport; a bicycle storage area, where agricultural workers can leave their bikes at the end of the season and collect them the following year if they return; and an info point offering legal and healthcare support. "Despite the 'Saluzzo model' being widely praised, problems remain. There are still people sleeping on the streets," says Pagnoni. "We need to think about housing solutions not only for workers with a contract but also for those who are looking for work. We also need greater sensitivity at the trade-union level regarding labour law, more inspections, and more efficient mechanisms for matching supply and demand."
In April 2024, Mediterranean Hope, a migration project run by the Federation of Protestant Churches in Italy, decided to replicate in the Saluzzo fruit district the good practices it had introduced in the plain of Gioia Tauro, in Calabria. While in southern Italy the orange harvest runs from around October to March-April, in Saluzzo the season begins in June with soft fruits and continues through to autumn with apples, kiwis and other produce. The workers are often the same people, travelling from one end of the country to the other according to the harvest calendar.
There is a great deal of talk about gang labour exploitation in southern Italy, but the same problem exists in the prosperous Saluzzo area too. Yet it is always very hard to discuss it openly.
Livio Craveri, Braccia Rese
"In the plain of Gioia Tauro, in Calabria, we set up a social hostel where we accommodate 40 to 50 agricultural workers. It was they themselves who gave us the idea: why don't you do something similar in Saluzzo as well?", says Giovanni D'Ambrosio, a worker at Mediterranean Hope. "Since the two seasons complement each other, it made sense to replicate that experience in the Saluzzo district, so that farmworkers facing precarious working and housing conditions could have a point of reference in Piedmont too." Last August, a first flat for agricultural workers was opened in Verzuolo, while in spring a rental contract was signed for a farmhouse in the Revello area, which can accommodate up to ten workers and is also intended to serve as a hub for socialising and community life.
Also in the Saluzzo area, Mediterranean Hope has launched the Etika initiative, which allows consumers to purchase products grown by ethical, solidarity-based and verified local producers. Among these is Braccia Rese, an organic winery perched on the hills of Busca, a few kilometres from Saluzzo. In 2022 it launched the "Errante" project, which involves producing a red wine from native Neretta Cuneese grapes and has since expanded to include cider, through the sister company Craveri&Lamberti. For every bottle sold, a portion of the proceeds goes to the Saluzzo migrante project run by the local Caritas. "There are many migrant workers in this area who keep the Saluzzo fruit district going," points out Livio Craveri, winemaker and co-owner of the two businesses. "We wanted to do something concrete to help these people, and also to give our production an ethical and social dimension. Our initiative has helped purchase many pairs of safety shoes for agricultural workers. For us, it is important that people keep talking about the rights of these workers and that we build a network in the fight against gang labour exploitation."
The fight against gang labour exploitation in the Saluzzo area does not only run through projects and initiatives aimed directly at protecting workers' rights. Moving around the territory and exploring places such as the nearby Valle Varaita, one encounters new ways of thinking about agricultural production and entrepreneurship, where the fierce competition and race to the bottom on costs driven by large-scale retail is supplanted by ideals of community, self-production and environmental and social sustainability.
