Abitudini alimentari e filiere resilienti nel lockdown da Covid-19 (Food habits and resilient supply chains in Covid-19 lockdown)

The lockdown has radically affected our choices and behaviors, upsetting our daily life and inevitably changing our eating habits. The longer time spent at home, the forced closure of the restaurants, the inability to frequently go out shopping, the uncertainty about the duration of "phase 1", were just some of the causes that led many people, in the long spring of 2020, to devote themselves to cooking and to grab supplies of food such as, for example, flour, pasta, olive oil and yeast that had become almost impossible to find in the very first days of the emergency. The consumption of food and beverages were among the few to show positive changes during the months of the pandemic, despite the fact that an important sector of the distribution channel concerning catering was stopped for a long period. What emerged from the statistical data collected are certainly the strategic nature of the agri-food sector and the growing trend of consumers towards the purchase of made in Italy food, healthy, linked to the typicality of the territory, produced in respect of environmental protection and which maintains an acceptable link between quality and price. However, the numbers linked to the increase in consumer prices are equally striking. The already existing economic imbalance to the disadvantage of agricultural producers, worsened during the health emergency: the increased prices paid by consumer were not followed by a significant increase of the prices paid to agricultural producers. Added to this are the criticalities linked to the extreme fragility of system emerged with the closure of the borders, which made it impossible for the specialized manpower required by the agricultural sector to arrive and, consequently, showed the vulnerability of some categories of workers, often illegally employed in the sector and, just as often, deprived of their fundamental rights. The legislative measures adopted in the early stages of the pandemic crisis to find remedies to those problems, unfortunately do not appear sufficient and adequate to be used in a peculiar economic phase as the current one. In light of this scenario, it is necessary to consider trends and rules that might be implemented in the near future, at national and European level, to foster a recovery of the sector. It is also necessary to question ourselves about the suitability of our supply chains to be, once again, resilient to bear the weight of the crisis resulting from the emergency, of which we do not know, unfortunately, the duration and evolution.