He can’t find an explanation or peace. “How is it that in just a few years,” asks Giancarlo Paparoni (pictured above), an organic citrus grower from the northern coast of Sicily, “my best customers disappeared?”
The farmer refers to certain distributors in the United Kingdom and France who do not supply the GDO (Large-Scale Distribution) but instead serve a niche food market, such as small supermarket chains and platforms that serve customers on-demand. Customers who, until last year, were willing to pay 1 euro per kilogram for a quality organic product, harvested and marketed with the leaf (making it easier to perceive its freshness), beautiful to look at, and good and juicy to eat, sometimes even 1.30 euros per kilogram. “Gone,” laments Giancarlo Paparoni, who is no novice in citrus farming and knows the sector well, being “a son of the trade,” as his family has owned the “Agricontura” farm for generations. Contura is the name of the district located in the area of Mirto, a small town at the foot of the Nebrodi mountains in the province of Messina.
Agricontura has been organic since 1989 (“when the first European regulation on organic farming hadn’t even been issued, and there weren’t any control bodies yet”). Paparoni’s pioneering choice was likely the key to opening the doors to a foreign market with great potential. A market that, until a few years ago, could absorb 90% of the lemons produced at Agricontura. This year, the collapse. While waiting in vain for orders from his French and English friends, whom Paparoni even hosted at his agriturismo (five cottages for a maximum of 25 beds nestled among lemon and orange trees), he has also missed the opportunity for selling at “European average prices.” That value remains stuck at 35 cents per kilogram, free on farm for conventional products. For organic products, the differential is only 2-3 cents more. A pittance. But even more miserable is the price paid by the processing industry: “They pay me 25 cents per kilogram of lemons, and I also have to cover the transport costs. Since I can’t leave the lemons on the tree or wait for them to fall, I’ve put the workers to work, but the proceeds will barely cover the harvesting expenses.”
Paparoni has never been inclined to complain and has always sought an explanation for the cyclical crises in the agricultural sector. In
particular, regarding the pricing mechanisms for citrus fruits, he has his own theory: “Probably a key element is the procurement of product from abroad with significantly lower costs, compared to which we Italian producers obviously cannot compete. The absurd thing is that the stringent regulations to which we are subjected in Italy and Europe don’t apply in the same way to products from abroad. I’m referring to the use of pesticides, fertilizers, or herbicides, or worse, the treatment of workers
Angela Sciortino
Corriere Ortofrutticolo
