Italy’s Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has praised her country for ranking first in value added agricultural growth in the European Union (EU) in 2024. This was in a press statement on the government website on January 22, 2025.

The Italian National Institute of Statistics (Istat) put yearly growth at 3.5% vis-á-vis EU’s collective 0.2% growth. 

Agricultural production improved by 1.4% year-on-year (y-o-y), also above the cumulative EU bloc’s growth of 0.5%.

Istat’s record is significant as it overcomes the negative value addition growth in 2023 at -3.53%, per the World Bank.

This is why the PM praised her government, whose systematic polices have apparently revitalized the agri-food sector.

One of her first policies as premier was the early 2023 ban on cultured meat production, thus supporting Italy’s huge livestock sector. 

Notably, Istat’s data puts 2024 prices of livestock and related products down by 2.2%, y-o-y.

Production of agricultural produce in 2024 got a shot in the arm from a lush fruit output growth of 5.4%. Fresh vegetable production grew by 3.8% while wine hiked by 3.5% despite weather challenges in the grape sector.

From a consumer point of view, agricultural produce, apart from animal products, grew costly in 2024, appreciating by 2.9%.

The report also shows that Italy used less agricultural labor than the EU bloc in 2024, registering 2.6% points drop, y-o-y.  The EU’s equivalent yearly reduction in farming labor was 0.9% points.

A fitting recap of the agriculture industry’s growth comes from Meloni herself, who writes how “agriculture (is) a central focus once again.”  To know how true these facts are, read the next statistics on Italy’s agriculture under this far-right leader.

Statistics on Italy Agriculture Performance Before and After Meloni 

After World War II, Italy shifted from a predominantly agricultural economy to an industrial one. This is why today in the 2020s agriculture contributes a small fraction of the economy at around 2%. As of 2022 when Meloni became premier, Italy’s agriculture represented 2.2% of the national GDP, according to official government figures. Nevertheless, this statistic rises further to 15% of the national GDP when including the entire agri-food value chain.  As such, the total agricultural value chain worth in Italy is equal to 549  billion Euro ($574 billion)-2022 data. 

In 2020, Italy was still experiencing COVID-19 distribution disruptions although agriculture was less affected than commercial services and industries. All the same, annual agricultural production that year fell by 3.2% while prices/value addition decreased by 6.1%, according to Istat.  Fisheries also experienced negative growth in production at -19.9% and value added volume at -26.8%. 

How did agriculture perform in 2021?  

A year later in 2021, rising production costs dealt a blow to the sector whose production growth slashed to -0.4%.  Meanwhile, value addition decreased by a massive 0.8%, year-on-year.

How is performance post-Maloni in 2022 and beyond? 

In 2022, Meloni oversaw prices or value addition rise by 6.7% even while production volumes fell by -0.4% year-on-year. In 2023, value addition growth reversed by -3.53% growth, per World Bank’s figures. Then in 2024, following robust agricultural centralization focus, both production and value addition grew by 1.4% and 3.5%, respectively.