Calabrian farmers in the streets: the crisis is also Hormuz's fault

I'm broke. Someone has already closed their business, others have been forced to lay off. Still others are afraid of failure. It was not enough to restructure the company's debts, enjoy concessions for livestock activities, review the ministerial tables downwards for the purchase of diesel. Calabrian farmers are on the streets, protecting squares, junctions, ports, airports, industrial areas and institutional headquarters with their own vehicles. Exhausted, scared, indignant. They protest to the bitter end together with the hauliers against the increases in the price of fuel which are affecting the production sector and daily travel.

A harsh protest, which has been affecting various areas of the region for eight days and which will culminate tomorrow with a national demonstration in Piazza Loreto in Cosenza. In the late afternoon today the gathering is still in the city of Bruzia, but in Piazza Europa.

In Francavilla, Cerchiara, Villapiana, in San Marco Argentano, in Vibo, in Lamezia, in the Pollino and in the Sila, in the upper Ionian area of ​​Cosenza, the Calabrian farmers showed their tears in public, they told stories of emigrations and returns, of unsustainable sacrifices to protect their companies. They spilled the milk contained in the tanks onto the asphalt, a commodity sold at 38 cents a liter compared to the cost of agricultural fuel at 1.68 euros, practically doubled.

«We work at a loss. Every day we are forced to choose, do we buy wheat or diesel?”. «We sell our products like 20 years ago, what was worth 1000 lire is now worth 50 cents». «We have increasingly higher production costs, drought forces us to irrigate the fields and pump water continuously». "At least leave us our dignity." Their voices overlap, becoming one with those of the hauliers who in the meantime are negotiating with the Region to start a dialogue with the Government. There are also unions, mayors and students in support of the protest. The National Popular Movement leads the mobilization. And, net of some attempts at political exploitation, it is a shared drama.

In the first days of the protest, the desperation publicly expressed by a man from Polistena, Antonio Zangari, who was sentenced in first instance by the court of Vibo Valentia to 4 years in prison for simple criminal association and receiving stolen goods in the context of the Olimpo Maestrale maxi trial, caused a sensation. But he is not the symbolic face of the Calabrian farmers' crisis.