-OpEd-
TURIN — When we sit down for a meal, a very difficult exercise is to try to figure out the number of kilometers the food has traveled and the path it took to arrive on our plate. This cognitive process, which we should implement several times a day, is crucial if we want to change the violent and perverse dynamics that govern a large majority of our food system.
We must start with one assumption, whether we like it or not: Today, food circulates regardless of the conditions of the workers that produce it, with no concern for the organoleptic quality of products or forms of land depletion, and neglecting the products’ nutritiousness, and threatening the health of those consuming it.
For those reasons, each of us has come into contact — unknowingly — with goods produced through inhumane labor systems, harmful cultivation or breeding practices, or processing and marketing methods that are prohibited by our own legislative system.
To understand how close these realities are to all of us, let’s use the example of a product that — barring intolerances or personal tastes — all of you have consumed at least once in the past two days: the tomato.
“Italian” tomatoes
Let’s start by saying that, without a doubt, the tomato has become inextricably linked to Italian identity, even though it is one of the most recent ingredients to be assimilated into Italian cuisine. It was mentioned in a written recipe in Italy for the first time in 1692. And the renowned Pellegrino Artusi cookbook La scienza in cucina e l’arte di mangiar bene (Science in the Kitchen and the Art of Eating Well), widely regarded as the bible of Italian cookbooks and first published in 1891, barely mentions it.
Yet the hype over “made in Italy” sometimes hides paradoxical and deeply worrying dynamics: It is important to know that not all tomatoes consumed in Italy are produced in the country, which does not produce enough tomatoes to satisfy even domestic demand.
Data shows that tomato imports are on the rise. In 2023, the quantity imported from China (the largest supplier to Italy and the rest of the EU) increased by 50%. Nothing wrong with that. But a thorough analysis of these imports is what opens Pandora’s box.
Chinese tomatoes are significantly less expensive and Italian ones cannot compete.
Chinese tomatoes are significantly less expensive — due to the infinitely lower cost of labor and an incomparable use of chemicals — and Italian ones cannot compete. To keep their share of the market, some Italian producers resort to the caporalato system, where employees are treated as slaves rather than free workers (in Italy, labor costs are the largest share of producers’ expenses).
This makes life for immigrants coming to Italy — a country that sees these humans treated as goods, being loaded onto trucks to go work in the fields early in the morning, but decides to look away — even more dangerous, feeding content to newspapers, but not obtaining even the most basic rights.
Some young Africans even find themselves doing the same thing they did back in their country of origin — a sad irony of a fate that, on closer inspection, is not even too fortuitous.
A vortex of slavery and pain
In fact, the Chinese tomatoes canned in Italy are sold (in the form of peeled or concentrated tomatoes) in Ghana or in other African countries, where there is a strong gastronomic tradition of tomatoes (even more rooted in history than Italy’s). Until 20 years ago, those countries had a blossoming economy tied to the harvest and production of fresh tomatoes.
And this is where the people that have been forced for various reasons — be it climate change, economic hardship, persecution or war — to cross deserts and seas to find a better life come in. The perversion of these systems, closely linked to agricultural production, means that they find themselves far from home doing the same work they would have done close to their loved ones. But they do it in working conditions on the margins of slavery, without rights, without money and sharing a house (this one a makeshift one, and no longer theirs) with dozens of other seasonal workers.
And to think that what has generated this paradoxical and horrific effect is a logic of Italian foreign branding carried out conscientiously by Italian companies themselves.
These are the real questions that underlie the concept of food sovereignty.
My point is that if there are margins to earn by selling canned goods in Italy or elsewhere — by dumping African tomatoes — it means that the product imported and sold as Italian can only be based on the lowest standards, in every respect. So how do we get out of this schizophrenia? How to stop a vortex that only brings slavery and pain, centralizing all the profits at the end of the food chain?
These are the real questions that underlie the concept of food sovereignty. (The term became part of the Italian Ministry of Agriculture under Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni: it is now called the Ministry of Agriculture, Food Sovereignty and Forests.)
If we want to hide these atrocities behind the concept of “made in Italy,” then we shouldn’t be surprised if some companies move their entire operations abroad to produce “Italian” pasta.
Chaos reigns supreme. Aware of this, we must start questioning our behavior and changing our choices. That is the only way we will be able to give to tomatoes, a product that has been turned into a commodity, a flavor that is tastier, cleaner and, more importantly, fair for all.
