In the last decade pesticide sales have plummeted by -32% in Italian agriculture, which ranks as the greenest in Europe. This is what emerges from an analysis by Italian farmers association Coldiretti on Eurostat data for the period between 2011 and 2019. This trend is in contrast to other major producing countries’ such as Spain and Germany, where the consumption of pesticides grows, while in France the fall is just over -10%.
According to latest Coldiretti’s analysis on EFSA data (on 96,302 food samples on sale in the European Union) the number of non-EU agri-food products with irregular chemical residues is 5.6%, compared to the EU average of 1.3% and just 0.9% in Italy.
TRANSPARENCY ON FOOD LABELS
Coldiretti proposes to follow the path for the mandatory indication of the origin of all kinds of food products on labels. This kind pf transparency now concerns four-fifths of the food expenditure of Italians (from meat to milk, from fresh fruit and vegetables to tomato preserves and cold cuts) even if it is not yet possible to know the origin of fruit processed into juices and jams, canned vegetables, legumes, and sugar.
Italian agriculture comes first in Europe for added value, but it is also the greenest and can count on undisputed leadership in food quality with 313 PDO, PGI or TGS specialties, as well as 415 Doc and Docg wines. Not to mention the leadership in organic farming, which involves about 80 thousand farms.