Southern Italy: are peeled tomatoes under threat?

The battle between processors and growers
As of 20 May, whereas the main tomato processing industries of the northern hemisphere had all come to agreements – not without difficulty at times – regarding prices for the 2017 season, representatives from the agricultural upstream sector and the industrial downstream sector of the South Central region of Italy had still not managed to agree on a price for raw tomatoes.
 
After much discussion, the Italian Minister of Agriculture decided to step in and attempt to conciliate the interests of the different parties. Growers and processors were due to be consulted separately, starting by agricultural production representatives, in order to reach a clear overview of the situation and understand the various arguments put forward.
Local sources have underlined the difficulties faced by companies and pointed out that closures have shrunk the industrial context year after year in the South Central region of Italy, aggravating the increasing discouragement of tomato growers in the area.
 
The contraction of programmed operations in the north is expected to be echoed this year in the South Central part of the country, particularly around the region of Foggia, where planted surfaces are due to be well below the 20 000 hectares usually planted. The reasons provided invoke the continual drop in the price of raw materials, as a number of companies this year have refused to carry over the prices paid last year (EUR 87 for round tomatoes intended for paste production, EUR 97 for oblong tomatoes intended for canned tomato products (peeled, unpeeled, whole, chopped)). According to the regional press, the worldwide markets and Chinese exports, particularly in the paste category, are to be held responsible for this Italian crisis.
 
A gap of EUR 18 per tonne for oblong tomatoes
Although it is more profitable, the peeled category – and more generally the category of tomatoes intended for canning – can no longer depend on its quality alone to face a crisis that is caused by excessive inventories and decreasing sales. Local sources explained that the prices offered this year – EUR 82 for paste tomatoes and EUR 87 for canning tomatoes – are very insufficient with regard to production costs. "Our tomatoes are different," producers' organizations in the south have stated, "and the quality of our product is better – processors need to give us an increase, or at least renew the prices they paid last year."
The counter-proposal that the agricultural partner POs have put forward is a price of EUR 95 for round tomatoes and EUR 105 for oblong tomatoes, which is a 20% discrepancy. Growers have even threatened to give up on the "Distretto Centro-Sud", the organization set up three years ago in the slipstream of the Pomodoro IO created in the north of Italy.
 
For the ANICAV, these proposals are "inadmissible" and its president, Antonio Ferraioli, has estimated that "there can be no dialogue in these conditions." In this context, given the lack of any interbranch agreement, it is feared that growers may have to sell at "spot prices" to factories, which would depend on market conditions that are known to have been stagnating for the past few years.
The Ministry's mediation, difficult and decisive, was requested by several MPs who are expecting the government to "take a strong initiative at national and European levels in order to overcome the difficulties that this industry is facing in terms of production and commercial distribution." According to local commentators, "what is at stake is the Italian system itself."
 
June 6, 2017
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A number of topics were discussed during the meetings held on 24 may with the Minister, among which the consolidation of the structures that play a role in the processing industry of southern Italy, as well as the extreme concern of industry partners at the absence of any fixed price and crop programming just two months before the harvest is due to start.
Despite all the efforts invested, no agreement has been reached.