IItaly is shocked by reports of “brutal” treatment of migrants working on farms across the country and the death of a flower picker in temperatures of around 40 degrees Celsius. Tens of thousands of migrants have taken to fields across Italy to harvest tomatoes and other crops as the country has been hit by successive heatwaves since mid-June.
The Italian Meteorological Society said average summer temperatures in Italy between June and August have risen by 1.5 degrees Celsius over the past 30 years, from 1994 to 2023.
The sweltering heat has brought a new and deadly risk to low-paid workers harvesting fruit and vegetables outdoors.
Dalvir Singh, who worked on a flower farm, is believed to have died from a combination of extreme summer heat and a heavy workload. The 54-year-old was found dead in a field near the town of Latina in central Italy on August 16. Colleagues who spoke to the Guardian said he had never been ill and was a “kind man who always worked hard”.
He regularly sent money to his family in Punjab, northern India, but friends said Singh had planned to return home in the next few years as he grew older and found it increasingly difficult to carry out daily work in the fields. His son and son-in-law are now trying to bring his body back to India.
Autopsy results are expected next month. Local prosecutors are still investigating the circumstances of Singh's death and whether his employer had taken precautions for workers exposed to the heat.
It is not known how many workers were injured or died due to the extreme heat in Italy this summer, but estimates suggest the country had the highest number of deaths in Europe as a result of last year's high temperatures – more than 12,000.
The Italian occupational safety authority had stated in the past that work-related accidents caused by heat were almost never classified as such, but rather as fainting, falls or similar.
Most of those working in the fields in the summer heat are migrants from countries such as India and sub-Saharan Africa. Although Italy's lucrative food industry generates billions in revenue, the harvest jobs come with low wages, long hours and a lack of workers' rights.
Many workers live in ghettos and abandoned buildings, and their employment is controlled by gangsters who recruit the workers and keep part of their wages, unions say.
Activists in Italy said bosses and gang leaders who exploit workers have no problem forcing them to work in all heat conditions, with many of them working 10- to 14-hour shifts a day.
In July, Italian police described more than two dozen Indian migrants they rescued from a farm in central Italy as “slaves” through debt, confiscation of their passports and squalid accommodation. The previous month, a farm worker died when he was allegedly abandoned on a road by his employer after severing an arm in an accident.
“When you combine extreme heat with criminal activities in agriculture, it is clear that the tragedies we have experienced [predicting] “There are actually some that have been going on for that long,” says Fabio Ciconte, director of the food and agriculture NGO Terra.
At least 30 people have fainted in Agro Pontino (an area of reclaimed farmland in central Italy, about 65 kilometers from Rome) since June due to the heat, says Marco Omizzolo, a sociologist at the University of La Sapienza in Rome.
Instead of calling an ambulance and preparing a medical report, the employer or foreman places the worker in the shade or gives him cold water or coffee before allowing him to continue working.
“Employers and gang leaders hide everything to avoid legal problems,” says Omizzolo.
Another death with parallels to Singh's was that of 28-year-old Famakan Dembele, a tomato picker in the southern Italian province of Foggia, who died on August 7 last year. The Guardian recently visited Foggia to report on the conditions.
It was a scorching hot day, say former colleagues of Dembele. After his shift, Dembele went to wash in a communal bathroom in the Torretta Antonacci ghetto, not far from Foggia, where he lived with around 2,000 other farm workers.
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The predominantly African migrants in the ghetto had hardly any sanitary facilities available. No running water, no electricity and no sanitation. Just a water tank that was filled daily by a truck. And makeshift accommodation made of recycled materials.
Born in Mali, Dembele had arrived in the ghetto from Paris just days earlier. Like thousands of other migrants, he had moved to Foggia to work in the tomato harvest. Much of the tomatoes are canned and shipped to shops and supermarkets across the UK and Europe.
At around 2pm, other workers saw Dembele lying in the shade under an olive tree. It started to rain and his colleagues came closer to see why he was not moving, even though water was pouring from the sky.
An ambulance was called, but witnesses said he was pronounced dead and a white sheet was placed over his body. His body remained under the olive tree until the coroner arrived and he was taken to the morgue.
The cause of death is still unknown, but workers the Guardian spoke to insist he died of extreme heat and exhaustion. Workers are usually paid by the number of crates or boxes of tomatoes they pick, earning around €35 (£29) a day.
“After Dembele's death, we all think twice before going out into the hottest hours. We can also drink five two-litre bottles in 24 hours,” says a 32-year-old worker from Guinea-Bissau who wishes to remain anonymous.
A court in Foggia opened and closed a case file into Dembélé's death, but requests for information from the Guardian there and from the local health authority were rejected.
“In some cases, the fatigue is so severe that people bleed for days when they go to the bathroom,” says Francesco Caruso, a university researcher and union activist. “Except for those with contracts, of which there are few, it is almost impossible to work every day.”
Another former colleague, Daniel, who worked for many years on farms in France and Italy, says working under the summer sun has become a curse. “If they showered me with money and said: 'Okay, now the tomato field is yours, you have to work on it every day', I would refuse. Working in such conditions is hell, not life.”
Climate scientists warn that vulnerable migrant workers are among those most at risk from extreme heat in Europe and the rest of the world.
“The people who die [from heat stress] are the people we care least about in society,” says Friederike Otto of the Grantham Institute for Climate Change and the Environment.
