The soft fruit season in the UK is already underway. But this year, due to Brexit and the war in Ukraine, farmers had to look for workers from Indonesia, Vietnam, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan instead of Ukraine and the EU.
Nearly 30% of people working in agriculture in Italy are migrants and refugees, according to Italian farmers confederation Coldiretti. While most of them are farmworkers, there are reportedly 17,000 foreigners who own agricultural businesses in Italy too.
The growing demand for cheap labor in Portugal has created opportunities for migrant workers. But it has also increased the risks of exploitation and human trafficking. A group of experts has called on Portuguese authorities to do more to tackle the problem.
The Italian trade union FLAI CGIL has spoken out against seasonal migrant workers in the Puglia region allegedly paying a "stay tax" of one euro per day to live in a "guesthouse that seems more of a makeshift refugee camp."
Italian farmers' association Coldiretti warns that Italy needs at least 100,000 seasonal migrant farmworkers to guarantee the fruit and vegetable harvest during the upcoming summer season.
Italian authorities have arrested a 30-year-old Moroccan citizen living in the Veneto city of Padua for allegedly exploiting 23 migrant workers of African origin. The migrants worked in the fields in shifts of up to 15 hours, investigators said.
Seasonal workers from Nepal have been illegally charged fees to pick fruit and vegetables in the UK, an investigation has found.
The association Cidis is promoting a project in the area around the southern city of Caserta, in Campania, to provide bus rides to immigrant farmworkers. The farmhands get free transportation to the fields as part of efforts to fight the gangmaster system.
A branch of the Italian Farmers' Association 'Coldiretti' in the southern Puglia region says there it is facing a serious shortage of workers. It has urged the national government to speed up the issuing of permits for workers from outside the EU.
The Puglia region has approved funding worth €158,000 to build a temporary guesthouse for some 120 foreign seasonal farmworkers who will be employed for the cherry harvest season.
Italian Labor Minister Andrea Orlando has warned against the risk of a new form of exploitation of migrant farmworkers in Italy, a "digital gang-master system." He reiterated that the government is committed to fight the exploitation of foreign workers in the agricultural sector.
Local authorities believe that the situation in the tent city for migrants in the Gioia Tauro plain in Calabria, southern Italy, is becoming increasingly dangerous. The facility, which has a maximum capacity of 300, is currently hosting some 350 African migrants, many of whom are farmworkers.