By now the estimates are clear, Italian agri-food exports will go from 52 billion in 2021 to 60 billion in 2022, breaking through a historical ceiling. But in terms of volumes, little or nothing has actually changed for five years: the quantity of Made in Italy products sold abroad is always the same. On the contrary, in the same five-year period the turnover collected by our exports took off by 28%.
What does it mean? A part of this increase in value is undoubtedly due to the ability of the Italian supply chains to increase the added value of individual products. But there is no doubt that a leap of this kind is also due to the hand of inflation. The data comes from the Divulga study center, coordinated by Riccardo Fargione
While awaiting the official Istat data covering the whole of 2020, the Divulga study center compared the statistics relating to the first ten months of last year for Il Sole 24 Ore. The result is that the top ten by value of exported products and the ranking by volume of exported products do not coincide. Let’s take vegetables, for example, which are the most exported Italian agri-food product by volume (over 3.3 million tons in the first ten months of 2022) and the second by billion euros collected (4.35). Well: in the ranking of products whose export volume has grown the most, vegetables do not even appear. Wine, which in terms of turnover is the most important slice of our agri-food exports, with over 6.5 billion in collections between January and October last year, is not included in the top ten of the largest increases in volumes.
So what are the foods that our country has managed to increase its sales abroad in terms of quantity? In first place, Divulga’s calculations tell us, there is wheat: in the first ten months of 2022, Italy sold 98% more of it. It is a pity, however, that this cereal represents only a small part of Italy’s agri-food trade balance: in the upper parts of the ranking of the most exported products, wheat does not even appear. By the way, its selling price has increased much more than its quantities sold, and this is a clear sign of inflation. Thanks to the lack of raw materials on the international market, thanks to the conflict in Ukraine, the foreign turnover of wheat grew by 211%.
Among the champions of quantitative increases, in second place after wheat, there are sheep and goat meat, whose foreign sales in volumes in the first ten months of 2022 grew by 28%. But even these certainly don’t represent the emblem of the most exported made in Italy food. Pasta, on the other hand, represents the fourth item of our exports for volumes sold abroad – 1.7 million tons in the first ten months of 2022 – but also the fifth item for exported turnover – 2.34 billion – and exported packages l last year they increased by 7.9% in volume. In value, however, the increase was as much as 40%. Again, the increase in price was greater than the increase in quantities.