In Italy over 50% of the entire EU rice production
The drought is devastating the Italian rice fields with estimated losses of over 30% of the harvest at a time when the record rise in production costs caused by the war in Ukraine has already cut planting nationwide by 10,000 hectares. This is what emerges from the analysis of Coldiretti on the consequences of lack of water and heat bombs on a strategic sector for the economy and food supply of the country where 1.5 million tons of paddy are harvested per year, over 50% of the entire EU production. Of the 217 thousand hectares cultivated in Italy – explains Coldiretti – 90% is concentrated in the north between Lombardy and Piedmont where a state of emergency was requested and the anti-dryness decree announced by Prime Minister Mario Draghi is awaited in the next Council of Ministers.
The two regions are, in fact, the epicenter of the wave of exceptional heat and drought which is affecting the country and there are areas between the provinces of Novara, Vercelli and part of that of Pavia where the real risk is to lose even 40% of production due to the lack of water to quench the young plants’ thirst. Several are farmers – reports Coldiretti – they found themselves in the dramatic situation of having to choose who to survive with irrigation: a paddy field rather than another, a corn field or one of Carnaroli or Arborio.
A emergency which is added to the increases in the prices of raw materials that are bringing to its knees a sector where Italy is the leader in Europe with record increases ranging from + 170% for fertilizers to + 129% for diesel, according to Coldiretti analysis. “To try to counter the increase in production costs, it is necessary to work immediately on supply chain agreements which are an indispensable tool for the enhancement of national productions and for an equitable distribution of value along the production chain”, says the president. of Coldiretti Ettore Prandini.
But Italian rice also weighs – explains Coldiretti – the unfair competition of low cost imports from Asian countries which are facilitated by the European Union despite not guaranteeing the same standards of food safety, environment and workers’ rights. In Italy, over 70% of imported rice is now duty free. An example is the Myanmar which became our first supplier with 23 million kilos in the first four months of 2022, ten times more than in the same period of the previous year with a trend favored by the expiry of the safeguard clause with which tariff concessions were blocked granted to the Asian country and Cambodia.
For years, the two Asian countries have benefited from the elimination of duties to export to Italy and Europe under the EBA regime (everything but arms). The result was a veritable invasion of Asian products that brought domestic producers to their knees. Moreover, these facilities were suspended only for the indica rice variety, while for the japonica they continued to remain active, despite the violence that occurred following the military coup. In the last production season 2021/2022 only from Myanmar almost 80 million kilos of rice arrived in Italy compared to two million in the previous year, while since Vietnamwhich has an agreement with the European Union for 80 million kilos duty-free, nearly 18 million kilos of paddy rice arrived in Italy, 6 times more than in the previous campaign.
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