Reportage
p. 018
The people who pick our tomatoes
Every August, ten thousand seasonal workers arrive in Foggia. Luca Ferrante follows one crew from dawn to the long dinner after.
At five in the morning the fields outside Foggia are cold and silent. By ten, the crates are too hot to touch. In between, a crew of twenty-two people will pick about eighteen tonnes of plum tomatoes, most of which will be in a tin by evening.
Every August, ten thousand seasonal workers arrive in this flat corner of Puglia. Many come from West Africa, some from Romania and Bulgaria, a few from the next village. They are paid by the crate.
After the picking
What interested me most was the evening. When the last crate is loaded, the crew I followed eats together under a carob tree at the edge of the field: pasta with the day’s split tomatoes, bread, onions, a lot of olive oil and, on Fridays, grilled mackerel.
It is the only meal of the day that nobody hurries.
“At five the field is cold. At ten you cannot touch the crates.”
About the writer
Luca Ferrante
Luca writes about bread, saints’ days and the small rules that keep southern Italian kitchens running. He teaches Latin when he isn’t on deadline.
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