Italian rice increasingly a leader: exports +9%. Coldiretti: more invaded and risk of 'unfair import'
Cultivated areas also increased, although the effects of climate change then limited the expected increase in production
2' min read
2' min read
In 2024, Italian rice exports were close to 720 million kilos, an increase of 9% compared to the previous year, with Germany the leading market, followed by France. Data that confirm our country as by far the leading European producer with over 50% of the total, in the year of the 80th anniversary of Carnaroli and the centenary of the first varietal crossing.
The cultivated areas are also increasing, even though the effects of climate change have limited the expected increase in production: the disastrous effect of the years of drought, replaced by the copious rainfall of the last two years, is still vivid in the memories of producers.
This is why rice growers are once again emphasising the importance of implementing a reservoir plan with pumping systems to ensure the availability of water, which is particularly important in the case of a crop like rice. A change of pace at an infrastructural level that would limit the problems caused by droughts and floods and allow, once and for all, the need to continue chasing emergencies to be avoided.
This was highlighted during the conference "Let's celebrate together the year of Italian rice", organised by Coldiretti on the occasion of the inauguration of Tuttofood at the Fiera di Milano Rho, with speeches by the president and secretary general of the association, Ettore Prandini and Vincenzo Gesmundo, the Minister of Agriculture for Food Sovereignty and Forestry Francesco Lollobrigida, and Roberto Magnaghi, Director General of Ente Nazionale Risi.
"Weighing on the future of Italian rice growers, however," says Coldiretti, "is also theunfair competition of imports from abroad, which risk being further favoured by the stipulation of trade agreements without respect for the principle of reciprocity, starting with that with the Mercosur countries. According to Coldiretti's complaint, the European Union plans to grant an initial quota of 10 thousand tonnes of South American rice at zero duty, which will gradually increase to 60 thousand tonnes. A quantity that, added to what already enters with subsidised duties (over 60% of imports), risks doubling the current imports (about 80,000 tonnes per year).
"But what weighs most," says Coldiretti, "is above all the absence of reciprocity, allowing the facilitated entry of products grown using substances banned in the EU for decades, as in the case of tricyclazole. This is a pesticide banned in the EU in 2016 but still widely used in Brazil and India, which, together with Pakistan, holds the European record for notifications on rice contaminated with banned pesticides.
