Coldiretti: "The hands of the mafia on grapes cause prices to triple"

ROME - "The grapes are underpaid to farmers on values ??that do not even cover production costs, but prices more than triple from field to table also due to the infiltration of the underworld which suffocates honest entrepreneurship and destroys competition and the free market". This is what Coldiretti says in reference to the operation carried out by the carabinieri, with the execution of 10 precautionary measures against a mafia organization active in mediation for the sale of grapes (the 'sensalie') in the Agrigento area.

“conditioned market”

“In doing so – underlines Coldiretti – the food marketing market is conditioned by establishing the prices of the crops, managing transport and sorting. Crime not only appropriates vast sectors of the agri-food sector and the resulting earnings, also taking advantage of the crisis caused by the pandemic and the energy crisis, but - underlines Coldiretti - compromises the quality and safety of products, with the effect indirectly to profoundly undermine the image of Italian products and the value of the Made in Italy brand.

"The agricultural mafia"

The mafias in the countryside, continues the confederation, "operate through the theft of agricultural equipment and vehicles, racketeering, livestock, extortion, or with the so-called protection money also in the form of imposition of labor or transport or guardianship services to farms, damaging of crops, assaults, usury, illegal slaughter, illegal hiring and fraud against the European Union up to the control of entire chains of supermarkets and restaurants with a criminal business estimated - concludes Coldiretti - at over 24.5 billion euros (from Agromafia Observatory)”.