When you buy tomato puree at the supermarket, you pay more for the bottle than for the tomato it contains. This is what emerges from an analysis by Coldiretti according to which for a 700 ml bottle of tomato puree, sold on average for 1,3 euros, the costs are divided as follows:
- distribution margin with promotions 53 %
- transport 6 %
- advertising 2 %
- industrial production costs 18%
- agricultural raw material (tomato) 8%
- bottle 10 %
- cap 2,5%
- label 0,5%
According to the association, there is a clear imbalance in the distribution of value along the supply chain, also favored by unfair commercial practices such as cases of double-reduction online halter auctions that strangle farmers with prices below production costs. This happens despite the code of ethics signed last year between the Ministry of Agriculture and the main large-scale retail chains, which should have avoided this phenomenon which pushes clearing prices that do not even cover production costs.
"We need to break the chain of exploitation that feeds on distortions along the supply chain, from distribution to industry up to the countryside where agricultural products paid below cost by a few cents push honest businesses to close and make room for illegality", says the president of the Coldiretti, Roberto Moncalvo, underlining the need to "complement the rules on illegal hiring with the approval of the proposals for the reform of food crimes presented by the special commission chaired by Giancarlo Caselli, president of the scientific committee of the Agromafia Observatory promoted by Coldiretti".
Foreign workers - concludes Moncalvo - contribute "in a structural and decisive way to the country's agricultural economy and represent an indispensable component for guaranteeing the primacy of Made in Italy food in the world in a territory where legality must be ensured to combat disturbing criminal phenomena that they humiliate men and their work and cast a shadow on a sector that has decisively chosen the path of attention to food and environmental safety”.
