The Italian agricultural industry has been relying mostly on immigrant workers since the Nineties; their number has multiplied by ten in the last twenty years, reaching an estimated 172.000 in 2007. Among them, especially in the South, many thousands are seasonal labourers, who move from town to town during the year harvesting tomatoes, olives, etcetera. They are the ones who face the harshest conditions. In Rosarno there lived several thousands of African immigrants (the estimations I’ve read vary between 2000 and 5000; the “native” population of the town is around 1500); they were harvesting the Calabrian oranges on the quality of which we Italians pride ourselves so much, and lived and worked in conditions challenging any minimum standard of human … [read more]