The essay investigates the effects produced by criminal networks
involved in the production and harvest of agricultural products. Focused
on the analysis of caporalato, it explores the enslavement of immigrant
agricultural labourers and territorial segregation practices. Moreover,
it deals with the topic of the agromafias' role and discusses matters
related to the deregulation of the agricultural market, as well as the
general crisis of the agroindustries. Because caporalato has become a
methodological instrument in the framework known as globalization of the
farmlands, this essay tries to evaluate the complex relationship between
the agromafias' power and the operational conditions of Italy's local
economies. The authors then explore elements of the extremely pervasive
criminal network, that determines productive trends of entire
agricultural departments, with the intention of denouncing the dangerous
socio-cultural drift that mafia-like criminal organizations are creating
in Europe.