In Italy, one in four agricultural products is harvested by foreign hands: 358 thousand regular workers from 164 different countries engaged in the fields and stables, providing more than 30% of the total working days needed by the sector. This is what emerges from Coldiretti's analysis of data released by the IDOS research center with reference to the Click Day of March 27 and the arrival in Italy of non-EU workers provided for by the Flows Decree with the new Prime Ministerial Decree. Foreign workers employed in agriculture are for the most part from Romania, Morocco, India and Albania, but there are representatives of somewhat all nationalities. These are mainly temporary employees who come from abroad and who cross the border every year for seasonal work and then return to their country often establishing lasting professional relationships as well as friendship with agricultural entrepreneurs. Coldiretti explains that there are many "agricultural districts" where immigrant workers are a well-integrated component in the economic and social fabric: this is the case of the harvest of strawberries in the Veronese, of the preparation of shoots in Friuli, of apples in Trentino, of fruit in Emilia Romagna, of grapes in Piedmont up to the dairy farms in Lombardy, where mainly the Indians carry out the activity of breeder. These are sectors that last year struggled to fill the labor shortage that has hit the countryside hard with the significant loss of national agricultural crops also due to the difficulties in moving workers to the borders as a result of the pandemic.
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