Italy's PDO economy exceeds 20 billion euro

The Italian PDO economy exceeds 20 billion euro in production value, with a 52% growth in ten years and a 19% contribution to the overall agro-food turnover. The 2023 figures, which come from the twelfth Ismea-Qualivita report, tell of a 3.5% growth in the food segment, led by cheeses, which reached 9 billion euros, while Doc and Docg wines, although at 11 billion euros in value, marked the pace in both quantity (-0.7%) and value (-2.3%). Of the over 20 billion of the PDO economy, 11.6 billion are collected thanks to exports.

In Italy, denomination products have 317 protection consortia, more than 194 thousand companies and almost 850 thousand employees. The queen of PDOs? It is Grana Padano, whose production value last year grew by 8.8%; in second place is Parmigiano Reggiano, down 7%, in third place is Prosciutto di Parma (+2%), fourth is Mozzarella di bufala campana (+5.1%) and fifth is Pecorino Romano (+30.8%).

The regional gold palm goes to Veneto with 4.85 billion Euro, followed by Emilia-Romagna with 3.87 billion and Lombardy with 2.58 billion. The four North-Eastern regions alone account for 54% of the PDO and PGI sector, with a value close to 11 billion. Among the top twenty provinces in terms of value, the best results in 2023 in absolute terms are those of Brescia, Treviso, Vicenza, Cremona and Udine; falling instead are Modena (-8.6%), Verona , Siena and Reggio nell'Emilia.