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Farmers tipped two bins of manure in front of Turin\u2019s city hall Friday morning, just before tens of thousands of people set off on a march against living costs and military spending. The farmers were acting \u201cagainst those who want to turn Turin into the city of arms companies,\u201d a speaker told the crowd over a microphone.<\/p>\n
Turin was one of more than 50 Italian cities that held protests Friday during a general strike called by the grassroots union USB. Farmers marched alongside truck drivers, students and taxi drivers. The same morning, Istat reported that Italian inflation rose to 5.4% in October, its highest level in more than three years. That\u2019s higher than in the U.S., where prices rose 3.7% in the year through September, and far above China\u2019s 0.9%. Italian energy prices were up 31.4% from a year earlier. Gas and diesel prices are so high that people were spotted riding horses through the streets of Naples.<\/p>\n
For Italian farmers, Friday was the latest round in a month-long fight over the cost of running a farm. In mid-October, truckers and farmers began blocking roads, ports and fuel depots across the south. Diesel costs roughly a third more than it did before the Iran war, and a temporary diesel tax discount expired earlier this month. \u201cIt\u2019s a peaceful protest and it\u2019s for the benefit of the people,\u201d said Vincenzo Aleccia, president of a trucking group in the Sicilian port of Trapani.<\/p>\n
Empty supermarket shelves<\/p>\n
The blockades cut off the supply of two of Italy\u2019s best-known foods. Since buffalo mozzarella has to be made within 60 hours of milking, and with trucks stopped, milk couldn\u2019t reach dairies near Naples. Pier Maria Saccani, director of the consortium that oversees Mozzarella di Bufala Campana DOP, said about 1 million liters went unused in a single day. <\/p>\n
\u201cYesterday, no mozzarella was produced,\u201d he told the AP, putting the loss at \u20ac3 million in 24 hours. Saccani said producers\u2019 costs had already risen about 30% before the blockades, and that they had absorbed most of the increase themselves.<\/p>\n
Pasta makers ran out of ingredients. Rummo, based in Campania, suspended production, and La Molisana halted its plant in Campobasso. Puglia grows about a quarter of Italy\u2019s durum wheat and mills much of the country\u2019s semolina, per Il Sole 24 Ore. Supermarkets in Naples posted apologies on empty shelves, and Sicily ran short of fresh pasta, cheese and meat.<\/p>\n
A north-south divide<\/p>\n
The regions that grow much of Italy\u2019s food were the ones that ran out of it. Retail group Federdistribuzione said fresh food rotted in warehouses in Campania, Puglia and Calabria. \u201cWe realized we were only hurting half of Italy, our half, the south,\u201d Giuseppe Richichi, president of a Sicilian truckers\u2019 association, told AFP.<\/p>\n
While protests in Milan and Bologna drew the headlines, the southern blockades were largely ignored. \u201cIt\u2019s become impossible to face the costs of fuel,\u201d Luigi Di Benedetto, who manages an agricultural business in Caltagirone, Sicily, told EUobserver.<\/p>\n
On Oct. 22, Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni\u2019s government approved a \u20ac175.2 million aid package for truckers, farmers and fishermen. That brought total aid to \u20ac540 million in tax credits. The last southern pickets came down the next day, but Richichi said the government was only paying money it already owed.<\/p>\n
The pressure on food prices goes back decades. Istat data show consumer prices rose about 63% between 2000 and 2025, while food prices rose about 90%.<\/p>\n
Italian farmers have marched on cities before. In February 2024, they drove tractor convoys into Rome to protest EU green rules, cheap imports and high costs. Meloni\u2019s government has taken a hard line on this year\u2019s protests. Before Friday\u2019s marches, the Interior Ministry made preventive arrests, and transport workers dropped plans to strike after Transport Minister Matteo Salvini threatened sanctions. In Turin, police briefly used a water cannon to push back protesters who approached the prefecture.<\/p>\n
#Italy #ran #mozzarella #pasta #farmers #dumping #manure #city #hall<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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