The alarm of the producers: to pay for a coffee we have to sell 4 kilos of apples
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Along the fruit chain everyone earns, except those who grow it. “A producer has to sell 4 kilos of apples to be able to pay for a coffee.” It is a provocation, but not too much, that of Enrico Nada, president of Coldiretti of Cuneo. A province where every year, only for the red apple IGP, 2 thousand companies work on an area of almost 6,000 hectares. “The situation has become unsustainable – he says – the only certain numbers, to date, concern the 2021 marketing year for apples: for almost all the varieties harvested last year, the producers received compensation lower than the calculated production costs. from Agrion, on average equal to 40 cents per kilo ». Not only crumbs, say the fruit growers, but also money arrived with too guilty delay: “The settlements arrived between April and September of this year – recalls Nada – that is almost a year after the harvest, a very serious delay”.
Not only for the province of Cuneo, but for the whole of our country, apples are a strategic product. Italy, after Poland (4.5 million tons) is the second largest apple producing country in the European Union, where the output is estimated at 12.2 million tons. And the risk, according to the fruit growers, is that 2022 will go even worse than 20221: “The fear – recalled by Coldiretti of Cuneo – is that at the end of this current campaign the apples will be paid even less than last year, even if in the face of rising costs for businesses due to increases in energy, fuel, raw materials and fertilizer prices. We cannot accept that fruit growers continue to work under production costs, and given what is happening we are ready to ask for the concrete application of the Decree on unfair commercial practices. We need an urgent meeting with the large-scale distribution to stop speculation and arrive at defining a strategy and planning that give concrete support to the sector ».
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