In the first 10 months of 2021, export sales of Italian F&B products increased by +11%. By the end of the year, they will reach the value of 52 billion euros – the highest of all time – definitely exiting from the crisis generated by Covid. This is what emerges from the analysis of the Italian farmers association Coldiretti on the basis of new Istat data on foreign trade.
This result has been obtained also thanks to the boost due to the festivities of the end of the year and despite the difficulties of trade and the shutdown of the restaurant industry that has severely affected the Italian cuisine in all continents. The Covid health emergency has provoked a healthy turn in global consumers, who are choosing more and more products that are allied to well-being, such as those of the Mediterranean Diet.
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Leading the ranking of Italian agri-food exports is wine, whose sales are set to exceed the value of 7 billion euros this year. Among the top importers of Italian products, we can find the United States, which ranks second with a +15% increase in imports in the period January-October 2021. Positive trends also in Germany, the first importer of Italian food (+6%), and in France (+7%), which is stable in third place. In fourth place is the UK where, however, sales are down -1% due to the difficulties linked to Brexit. In the same period the Russian market grew by +14%, and the Chinese one by +39%.
At the base of the success of Made in Italy products, there is agriculture that has become the greenest in Europe. Italy can boast the leadership in organic farming with 80 thousand operators, the highest number of PDO / PGI / TSG food products (316), and wines (526) as well as 5,333 traditional food products. Italy is the first European producer of rice, durum wheat, wine, and many typical vegetables of the Mediterranean Diet such as tomatoes, eggplants, artichokes, fresh chicory, endives, celery, and fennel.
