These days there is a coming and going of trucks from the port of Manfredonia: they unload the grain from ships coming from abroad and distribute it throughout Italy. With the result that the price of organic wheat made in Italy has collapsed. The complaint comes from the CIA Puglia: “It appears evident that in the vicinity of the threshing, and therefore of the placing on the market of the new product, the speculative maneuvers of the grain traders have been activated through the massive resumption of imports from abroad”, says Mchele Ferrandino, president of Cia Capitanata.
The problem, claims the association, concerns the whole of Puglia, and is highlighted by the list of cereal prices of Altamura, Bari and Foggia, the three main squares. Compared to the values of February 17, 2021, for example, in Foggia durum wheat has lost a total of 10 euros per ton of value. It is no better in Bari, where in recent weeks the leading cereal of Apulian agriculture has lost 8 euros on the minimum and 10 on the maximum compared to the best price reached last summer, reaching the current share of 288-291 euros per ton. The same price is also in Altamura: “Also in this case – declared Felice Ardito, president of Cia Levante – we are well below 300 euros per ton, a level that would still be low”.
Loading…
For the CIA, once again the problem lies in the imbalance between the price granted to producers, which is not always able to guarantee the right income, and the growing profits of the subsequent links of the supply chains, from traders to processing industries, passing through GDO. “In these days – recalls Raffaele Carrabba, president of Cia Puglia – we had already highlighted the perverse mechanism that leads our cherries to be sold up to 16 euros per kilo in supermarkets in the North, while those same cherries are also paid to producers. 10 times less. Now let’s focus on wheat ».
As for the organic hard one, in the last two years imports have increased by 30%. Puglia produces more than 25% of Italian durum wheat: in 2020 the Apulian provinces overall produced 9.5 million quintals of this cereal. «To limit the temptation of speculative maneuvers – says Raffaele Carrabba – we should consider the possibility of temporarily suspending imports at certain times of the year. The market is free and globalized, but it is nevertheless necessary to protect the future of a strategic supply chain that is too often penalized by massive imports from abroad, with foreign durum wheat which, for a series of very concrete reasons, presents several unknowns from the point of view. of quality and healthiness “.