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April 24, 2020 Weeks of paralysis of the country's production system begin to present the bill. And it is the social fabric of the whole country that is affected, especially in its most vulnerable fringes, as emerges from the many sector reports, the latest one published today by Coldiretti.

A million new poor
The new poor who need help to eat also rise by over a million, due to the limitations imposed to contain the infection and the consequent loss of job opportunities, even occasional. This is what emerges from an estimate by Coldiretti on the two months from the start of the first lockdown in some areas to then extend throughout Italy, based on the people who benefited from food aid with Fead funds distributed by associations such as Caritas and the Food bank which recorded an increase of even 40% in requests for help with peaks even higher in some areas of the country.

Among the new poor - Coldiretti points out - there are those who have lost their jobs and cannot use smart working, small traders or artisans who have had to close, people employed in the underground who do not enjoy special subsidies or public aid and not they have savings set aside, as well as many temporary and temporary workers.

People and families never seen before canteens
At the distribution centers of food parcels and solidarity canteens people and families are presented who have never experienced such problematic living conditions before, and dozens of telephone calls arrive daily with requests helpful because fathers and mothers do not know how to feed their children and are ashamed to find themselves in this type of difficulty for the first time.

A band of new destitute that raises the number of people in Italy who currently need cars to eat to 3.7 million.

Difficult situations are widespread throughout the peninsula but the greatest problems - Coldiretti points out - are recorded in the South with 20% of the poor in Campania , 14% in Calabria and 11% in Sicily but widespread situation Food needs are also found in Lazio (10%) and Lombardy (9%) where the health emergency hit the hardest, according to the latest Fead data.

An unprecedented social emergency since the post-war period against which - continues Coldiretti - solidarity was activated to strengthen food interventions for those in difficulty. In the field - continues Coldiretti - many organizations active in the distribution of food have come down, and in Italy there are about ten thousand peripheral structures (canteens and distribution centers) promoted by almost 200 charitable institutions involved in the coordination of officially recognized territorial entities that deals with the distribution of Fead aid paid by the Agency for Agricultural Payments (Agea).

Solidarity increases
Almost 4 out of 10 Italians (39%) said they participate in solidarity initiatives to help those most in need through donations or food parcels, also using the aid operations put in place by farmers with suspended spending, according to the Coldiretti / Ixè survey. The emergency and the new climate of social solidarity between people, even unknown to each other, but united by the war of resistance against the pandemic, pushed the Italians to move in favor of others: more than a third (36%) did so with donations via the web, 17% used the telephone, while 1 in 4 Italians (25%) took care of shopping for the elderly and disabled, while an equally important portion of the population equal to 24% - Coldiretti concludes - dedicated to the purchase of food parcels for the needy or adhering to suspended spending initiatives such as that initiated by Coldiretti in the Campagna Amica markets throughout Italy