Three million Italians ask for help to eat. Unemployed, small traders and artisans: the identikit of the new poor

ROME. The number of poor people and people asking for help to eat by resorting to soup kitchens or food parcels is growing. According to Coldiretti we have reached over 3.1 million people. Among the new poor there are also those who have lost their jobs, small traders or artisans who have had to close, people employed in the informal sector who do not enjoy particular subsidies or public aid and have no savings set aside, as well as many temporary workers or with activities affected by the crisis by the jump in energy costs with the high bills and by the effects of climate change which has devastated the farms of Romagna.
The fault lies with food inflation “the highest for almost 40 years”, Coldiretti points out in his study “The poor, the hidden side of Italy” presented on the occasion of the large farmer’s market in Campagna Amica in San Pietro dedicated to solidarity with the ” suspended shopping”, the fraternity table for the neediest and the solidarity basket for the homeless but also the space dedicated to flooded farmers as part of the “World Meeting of Human Fraternity”, inspired by Pope Francis’ encyclical Fratelli tutti.
Italy – underlines Coldiretti – is preparing to experience the most expensive summer at the table for decades with the number of children under 15 needing assistance to eat which has exceeded 630 thousand, practically a fifth of the total assisted, to whom 356,000 elderly people over the age of 65 must be added, as well as an audience of hunger and hardship involving more than 2.1 million people between the ages of 16 and 64.
According to Coldiretti estimates based on Fead data, the number of people who have asked for help with eating has risen by one million in the last three years: 64% live in the South, 22% in the North and the rest in the central areas Italy. Over 2 million people received food aid on an ongoing basis, the rest turned to assistance programs and facilities only occasionally as a last resort and solution in times of extreme need.
The vast majority of those who have been forced to resort to food aid do so through the delivery of food parcels (over 92,000 tons of food distributed in the last 12 months) which respond more to the expectations of the new poor who, out of shame, prefer this form of support rather than the consumption of free meals in charitable structures.
In the basket of solidarity – Coldiretti highlights – there are almost all non-perishable products: from UHT long-life milk (23%) to pasta (9%), from tomato sauce (8%) to legumes (5%) , from fruit juices and sugar (5%) to coffee and biscuits (4%), without forgetting canned meat and tuna (3%), flour, jams, cheese, rusks (2%).
Among all those who ask for help for food – the study highlights – more than 1 in 5 (23%) is a migrant who in our country is unable to get their “daily bread” on their own, but there are also over 90,000 homeless who live on the street, in emergency shelters, in tents or even in cars and almost 34,000 disabled people. In 2022 they received assistance to eat even 48 thousand Ukrainians in the very year in which the country was invaded and devastated by the Russian army.
In total, in the last 5 years, over 8 million kilos of food for needy families have been collected by Coldiretti farmers through the suspended shopping mobilizations launched through the Campagna Amica markets from north to south of Italy . In this way, over 400,000 families have been helped for an average of more than 20 kilos per nucleus with around 100,000 children in difficult conditions helped in this solidarity operation in which Caritas, parish canteens and hospital foundations have collaborated. “With the suspended spending we wanted to give a tangible sign of the solidarity of farmers towards the weakest sections of the population most affected by economic difficulties” explains the president of Coldiretti Ettore Prandini in underlining that “this experience has become a structural phenomenon present in all farmers markets in our country”.