A year of soaring prices favored exporters of agricultural raw materials and penalized the processing countries. The result? It is that Brazil obtained a surplus in the agri-food trade balance of 113 billion euros against 73 the previous year, while Italy went from a 4 billion euro surplus in 2021 to a 1.4 billion euro deficit in 2022. The data comes from Nomisma, which processed them in collaboration with Crif on the occasion of the VII Agrifood Monitor Forum.
Brazil is therefore the country that has gained the most from the geopolitical tensions and climatic adversities that have conditioned the global scenario over the last year. The value of its agri-food exports has grown by more than 50%, more than 126 billion euros, second place overall after the USA. The leap forward was above all for maize (+230%), for which Italy instead recorded a 24% lower harvest in the same year than the 2017-2019 average.
In addition to corn, our country is also not self-sufficient in wheat, barley, soybeans, vegetable oils, sugar and nuts. demand is higher than national production. Although 57% of national agricultural imports come from the European Union, dependence on non-EU areas is still high for some primary products, in particular soybeans, sunflower oil and durum wheat. «The current geopolitical situation – Denis Pantini, Nomisma’s agri-food manager – will lead to the strengthening of ties and trade between blocks of friendly countries in the coming years. The goal will be to reduce the risk of breakdowns in the supply chains which for two years now have generated increases in the production costs of companies and inflationary flare-ups in consumer food prices, with cascading effects on the shopping cart Italians”.