Vegetable imports +50% in 5 years, but positive signals from exports and consumption

Early potatoes from Egypt and late potatoes from France, tomatoes from Morocco and North Africa, carrots from Northern Europe: while Unesco World Heritage Italian cuisine is enjoying worldwide acclaim, it is in danger of losing some of the key chains of its success.

On vegetables the statistics are merciless: over the last five years Italy has increased imports by 50%. This,' Fruitimprese points out, 'is a sector where the distance in terms of production costs with other producer countries, particularly Spain and North Africa, is making the difference. Other products for which we were once leaders such as tomatoes, onions, salads and aubergines are also increasingly harvested in the South, where costs are lower and labour is readily available. But - in the case of carrots - there is also Northern Europe, with the Netherlands in the front row, being extremely refined breeders. "The risk of these production drops," Davide Vernocchi, fruit and vegetable manager of Fedagripesca Confcooperative, does not tire of repeating, "is to lose entire typical production chains, which we will never recover.

According to Istat data processed by Fruitimprese for the first nine months of 2025, the carrot is the vegetable that best expresses the "catatonia" of the horticultural sector. The flagship of the Made in Italy sector, like potatoes, it too closed the third quarter of 2025 with an import quota that more than doubled: +117%. Yet, until a few years ago the 11 thousand hectares devoted to production allowed Italy to import 9 million and export 99 million euro (source: Ismea).

Lately, however, we have been inundated with foreign carrots mainly from France, the Netherlands and Belgium, but also Germany and the Czech Republic. And yet we maintain the leadership in terms of vegetable seeds (and aromatic herbs), with 42,500 hectares dedicated, as the latest report compiled by Assosementi reveals, with consolidated territorial dynamics: Emilia-Romagna in first place with 14,112 hectares, followed by Puglia (10,474 hectares) and Marche (6,264 hectares) and with Molise and Basilicata growing by more than 30 per cent.

'We always come back to the usual reasons,' Vernocchi explains, 'climate change and lack of molecules to defend crops from insects or fungi. "On the EU front," adds Fruitimprese president Marco Salvi, "the alternatives available to farmers to combat these problems continue to shrink; next year too, a dozen very important active ingredients are candidates for reduction, if not outright elimination.