Author(s)

Giulia D’Amico

Posted on 17 Aug 2026

In early June 2026, four migrant farmworkers were burnt to death in a car at a petrol station in Calabria, southern Italy, following an alleged dispute over unpaid wages. This case once again brought international attention to the so-called ‘agromafia’, the vast criminal networks embedded within Italy’s agricultural sector. 

Surveillance footage of the attack reportedly showed two men setting fire to the vehicle and blocking the doors to prevent the occupants from escaping. The victims, three Afghan nationals and one Pakistani, were said to have complained about being forced to work in exchange for food and board, without receiving pay. Two Pakistani nationals, believed to be intermediaries, were arrested on charges of aggravated murder. 

Italy’s agromafia is an organized crime ecosystem that extends far beyond labour exploitation and the farming industry. Its illicit business spans food counterfeiting, price fixing, land theft, the embezzlement of public funds and extortion, and generates an estimated €25 billion a year. 

This is not the first time labour exploitation in Italy has turned deadly. In 2024, for instance, Satnam Singh, an undocumented Indian farm worker in Lazio, died after his employer abandoned him by the roadside following a workplace accident that severed his arm. Nearly a decade earlier, Italian national Paola Clemente died of a heart attack during a 12-hour shift in a vineyard in Puglia. Such incidents have sparked national outrage, and have been widely described as evidence of conditions amounting to modern slavery. 

These cases suggest a systemic pattern, where informal and poorly regulated labour arrangements allow criminal ecosystems to flourish, and where migrant smuggling, human trafficking and other related illicit activities reinforce each other. 

The business of exploitation

Over time, the agromafia has infiltrated every stage of Italy’s agricultural supply chain, from land acquisition to retail distribution. Caporalato, the gangmaster system through which illicit intermediaries supply and control farm labour, is one of the main mechanisms through which profits are extracted. It has flourished alongside the sector’s structural decline: over the past decade, Italy has lost nearly 500 000 farms, largely due to industry consolidation, economic pressure and an ageing workforce. Meanwhile, irregular employment has become entrenched, creating fertile ground for exploitation. 

While Italian authorities often describe caporalato as an irregular labour practice, this downplays its scale and sophistication. It operates as a parallel labour governance system, with brokers, some of whom run legitimate recruitment or transport businesses, controlling workers’ access to travel, housing and documentation. Workers pay inflated prices for transport to remote fields and accommodation in informal settlements, and may be denied food, water or even the opportunity to work. Even where formal contracts exist, employers often declare only a fraction of the time worked, paying the rest ‘off the books’ and thus depriving workers of pensions and other benefits. Where intermediaries also control accommodation and mobility, effectively preventing people from leaving, the practice can amount to forced labour. 

The violence witnessed in Calabria is an extreme manifestation of a system based on coercion and control. Although caporalato is often associated with southern Italy, the country’s traditional agricultural heartland, investigations have revealed such networks in regions such as Lombardy, Veneto, Emilia-Romagna, Tuscany and Piedmont. Comparable exploitation models have also been identified in sectors such as logistics, construction and textiles. The evidence suggests that caporalato now operates as a national system of exploitation. 

A transnational recruitment network

Labour recruitment in the caporalato system is increasingly moving offshore and into the realm of human trafficking. Prospective workers from Pakistan, India, Bangladesh and Morocco are approached by broker networks in their countries of origin, sometimes under false promises of legitimate employment through the Decreto flussi, Italy’s annual quota for non-EU labour migration. Many pay thousands of euros in fees, leaving them heavily in debt before they even reach Europe. 

The mismatch between labour demand and fixed annual quotas, combined with limited government monitoring of sponsors, creates opportunities for brokers and criminal networks to profit from migrant workers’ vulnerability. In 2024, Italian authorities dismantled a criminal network that had exploited the ‘click day’ system, through which applications for non-EU work permits are submitted online, by submitting thousands of fraudulent requests. Migrants were reportedly charged up to €2 000 to secure a position in the scheme, only to find that the sponsoring companies had either disappeared or had never intended to employ them. Unable to regularize their status or repay their recruitment debts, they became reliant on the same informal brokers who had illicitly arranged their journey in the first place.  

The limits of legislation

The concept of agromafia is largely absent from EU policy frameworks, which tend to address related crimes such as trafficking, labour exploitation and fraud separately, rather than recognizing them as interconnected systems. A 2024 EMPACT enforcement operation carried out across 31 European countries revealed the scale of the problem, identifying 334 potential victims and 160 perpetrators. Caporalato-linked networks have also been uncovered beyond Italy, with recruitment and intermediary links reaching Austria, Belgium, Germany, Slovakia, Spain and the Netherlands. This demonstrates how criminal labour markets operate across borders while remaining embedded in legitimate supply chains. 

The EU Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive, which requires companies to identify and address human rights risks across their supply chains, could help to address this issue. However, its effectiveness will depend on the extent of the scrutiny. Currently, due diligence obligations are too easily satisfied by checking a company’s direct suppliers, while the workers most at risk are often employed by subcontracted labour gangs. Consequently, wholesalers, distributors and retailers whose purchasing decisions influence conditions on farms may remain several steps removed from exploitation taking place further down the supply chain. 

Italy introduced specific legislation criminalizing labour exploitation and illicit intermediation in 2016. Yet in 2023, most businesses inspected by Italy’s National Labour Inspectorate were found to be non-compliant. With only 2 000 labour inspectors responsible for overseeing 1.1 million farms, there is a substantial gap between legislation and enforcement. 

Meaningful reform must address both ends of the system. Regarding recruitment, the Decreto flussi should include the mandatory registration and monitoring of labour brokers, transparent fees and sanctions for sponsors who abandon workers. This would close the loophole that allows legal migration to turn into criminal dependency. When it comes to enforcement, existing specialized agricultural inspection units need to work more closely with anti-trafficking and organized crime investigators. Checks should cover accommodation, transport and payroll records, and extend beyond individual employers and farms to the networks the profit from exploitation. 

The EU, for its part, should treat agromafia as a distinct organized crime threat requiring systematic cross-border monitoring, rather than as a subset of trafficking policy. Enforcing the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive across the entire food production chain, rather than just first-tier suppliers, and investing in safe housing, subsidized transport and legal support – independent of employers – would also help address the conditions that make exploitation profitable. 

The ‘Made in Italy’ brand’s excellent reputation continues to shield agricultural supply chains from scrutiny. Acknowledging that labour exploitation in the sector constitutes organized crime, rather than merely labour or compliance violations, will be essential for an effective European response.