Why buy Italian fruit?

We have been asked many times why you should buy Italian fruit, so we thought we would share our answer to highlight the reasons why it is better to buy fruit and vegetables possibly produced in Italy, regardless of the taste (we will leave that up to you to judge :) ).

In our opinion the reasons are:

• Lower environmental impact : transportation has a negative impact on the environment. For example, transporting lemons from Argentina (they are often seen in our supermarkets) has a much higher environmental impact than lemons from Southern Italy. Assuming that they are consumed in Milan, it is respectively 11,150 km vs 1150 km (a difference of 10 times!).

• Use of pesticides : in Italy the legislation is very stringent, many pesticides banned in our country are instead used in other countries of the European Union. Not to mention non-EU countries. Furthermore, in 2013 the EFSA report highlighted that Italy recorded the lowest number of agri-food products with chemical residues over the limit (0.3%), five times lower than the European average (1.5% irregularities) and 26 times lower than non-EU ones (7.9%). Therefore, even if you buy non-organic products, in general the Italian ones are still safer. Finally, Italian agriculture is not an industrial type like for example the Spanish one: this leads to lower efficiency and production yield but also a lower environmental impact (agriculture is one of the main sources of carbon dioxide emissions, about 25%) in addition to maintaining intact the high biodiversity of our country.

• More work in Italy : it is true that we now live in a global context, but why not increase work here in Italy given the recognized quality of our agri-food sector?

Then obviously, buying both Italian and organic food is the best choice. :)