IItaly has been shocked by reports of “brutal” treatment of migrant workers on farms across the country, as well as the death of a flower picker in temperatures of around 40 degrees Celsius (104 Fahrenheit). Since mid-June, Italy has been hit by successive heat waves, which have prompted tens of thousands of migrants to take to fields across the country to pick tomatoes and other crops.
The Italian Meteorological Society announced that the average temperature in Italy's summer months from June to August has risen by 1.5 degrees over the past 30 years, from 1994 to 2023.
The sweltering heat is posing deadly new dangers for low-wage workers toiling outside to pick fruits and vegetables.
Dalbir Singh, a flower farm worker, is believed to have died from a combination of extreme summer heat and overwork. The 54-year-old was found dead in a field near the central Italian city of Latina on August 16. Colleagues who spoke to The Guardian said Singh had never been ill and was “a kind person who always worked hard”.
Singh regularly sent remittances to his family in the northern Indian state of Punjab, but friends said he was getting older and finding it difficult to work in the fields every day and had planned to return home within the next few years. Now Singh's son and son-in-law are trying to bring his body back to India.
Autopsy results are due to be released next month, but local prosecutors are still investigating the circumstances of Mr Singh's death and whether his employer had taken precautions for workers exposed to the heat.
It is unclear how many workers in Italy have been injured or killed by the heat this summer. But the country Estimation Last year's high temperatures resulted in the highest death toll in Europe (more than 12,000 people).
Italian Health Safety Agency said In the past, heat-related workplace accidents were rarely classified as heat-related, such as fainting or falls.
Most of the people who work in the fields in the summer heat are migrants from countries including India and sub-Saharan Africa. Italy's lucrative food industry generates billions of euros in revenue, but harvesting work comes with low wages, long hours and a lack of employment rights.
Labor unions say many workers live in slums or abandoned buildings and that gang leaders control their employment, recruiting workers and taking part of their wages for themselves.
Italian activists say exploitative bosses and gang bosses have no problem making workers work in extreme heat, many in shifts of 10 to 14 hours a day.
In July, Italian police Explained More than 20 Indian migrants rescued from farms in central Italy were allegedly “reduced into slavery” through debt, confiscation of passports and dilapidated housing. The previous month, a farm worker lost his arm in an accident and was reportedly left by his employers on the road to die.
“If there is a correlation between extreme heat and agricultural crime, the tragedy we have experienced is [predicting] “What has long been predicted is now happening,” said Fabio Ciconte, director of the food and agriculture NGO Terra.
At least 30 people have fainted in Agro Ponto – a reclaimed agricultural area in central Italy about 40 miles from Rome – because of the heat, the worst since June, said Marco Omizzolo, a sociologist at Sapienza University of Rome.
Instead of calling an ambulance and writing up a medical certificate, employers or bosses simply place the worker in the shade, give him cold water or coffee, and allow him to continue working.
“Employers and gang leaders hide everything to avoid legal issues,” Omizzolo said.
Another death, in similar circumstances to Singh's, was that of Famakan Dembele, a 28-year-old tomato harvester from Foggia, southern Italy, who died on August 7 last year. The Guardian recently visited Foggia and reported on the situation.
It was scorching hot that day, according to Dembele's former colleagues, and after his shift he washed in one of the communal bathrooms in Torretta Antonacci, a slum not far from Foggia, where he lived with around 2,000 other farm workers.
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The ghetto's mostly immigrants, most of them African, had few basic amenities: no running water, electricity or sanitation, just water tanks that were refilled daily by trucks, and makeshift shelters built from recycled materials.
The Mali-born Dembele had arrived in the ghetto from Paris a few days earlier, drawn to Foggia like thousands of other migrants to work harvesting the area's tomatoes, many of which are canned and shipped to shops and supermarkets across Britain and Europe.
At around 2pm, other workers reportedly saw Dembele lying in the shade of an olive tree. It started to rain and their colleagues went closer to see why he was not moving as 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, which was placed under an olive tree until the coroner arrived and his body was taken to the morgue.
The cause of death is unknown but workers who spoke to The Guardian claim they died of extreme heat and exhaustion. Workers are typically paid according to the number of boxes or crates of tomatoes they pick, earning around 35 euros (£29) a day.
“After Dembele's death, we all think twice before going into the hottest hours. You can drink five two-liter bottles in 24 hours,” said a 32-year-old worker from Guinea-Bissau, who asked not to be named.
A judicial file into Dembele's death was opened and closed at the court in Foggia, but requests for information from the Guardian to the court and local health authorities were rejected.
“The fatigue is so bad that in some cases, going to the toilet means bleeding for days,” said Francesco Caruso, a university researcher and union advocate. “Working every day is almost impossible, except for those employed on a contract basis, and there are a small number of them.”
Daniel, a former colleague who worked for years on farms in France and Italy, says working under the summer sun was like a curse: “If they gave me a lot of money and said, 'Okay, the tomato field is yours and you have to work every day,' I would say no. Working in those conditions is hell, it's not life.”
Climate scientists have warned that vulnerable migrant workers are most at risk from extreme heat in Europe and other parts of the world.
“The people who die [from heat stress] “They are the people in society that are least cared for,” says Friederike Otto of the Grantham Institute for Climate Change and Environment.
