The 2020 campaign of the industrial tomato as a particular harvest is one to be remembered, as for the problems and dynamics of production resulting from the pandemic complications. In particular, the delays in the execution of logistics, the water scarcity in central-southern Italy, and the uncertainty in the demand planning to me production volumes.
Climatic problems such as the rains of early August caused consequences such as a net reduction in volumes, with an immediate upward impact on prices, considering that budgetary costs were giving farmers negative margins. Therefore hectare yieldings were largely affected and farmers had a waste of product.
Not yet done, the country saw an intense heat wave, where Italian farmers have literally seen products cooking in fields subject to very high temperatures. Virtually all summer crops were affected. A few days ago, Coldiretti explained that with the scorching heat approaching 40 degrees, heat shocks and burns for fruits and vegetables ready to be harvested from north to south are in danger of being thrown away, nullifying a year of work for cultivars like peppers, eggplant and watermelons. In particular, at Emilia Romagna, according to Conf Agriculture. Not to mention the problems that are being posed in the south and the change in cultivation time, which has led to the simultaneous ripening of an excessive amount of product. In other words, when the tomato did not end up boiled in the plant, the excessive amount of product was not discarded by the farmers. The adverse climate, thus, exploded any programming of the collection and, therefore, of the sales, as well as of the transformation industry.
Italy is the world's second largest producer of industrial tomatoes, after the United States (with a 13% share in the world and 50% in Europe). The great heat, therefore, runs the risk of affecting the fate of a historic supply chain for Italian agriculture, which is worth about 3.5 billion euros and is already facing other structural problems.