Italian wheat, 2024 production will be the lowest in the last 10 years

The production of Italian durum wheat, an essential ingredient for producing pasta, will fall below 3.5 million tonnes this year, the lowest in the last 10 years. The forecasts, one month from the start of the first threshing, come from the Italian Agricultural Consortiums and Coldiretti. According to their calculations, in our country the areas cultivated with durum wheat have reduced by 11% compared to 2023, falling below 1.2 million hectares, with peaks of -17% in the areas of Central and Southern Italy, where it comes from. approximately 90% of the national harvest. The fault for this decline is primarily the drought, which reduced the production of durum wheat in Puglia with decreases of between 20 and 30%, while in some areas of Sicily it reached peaks of -70%. According to the Coldiretti, however, would also be responsible for unfair competition from abroad, which caused wheat prices to collapse and, consequently, pushed fewer farmers to sow wheat, which is now less ...