A/HRC/43/44/Add.5 participation of farmers. Part of the subsidies offered to the agricultural sector also include mechanisms to facilitate the establishment of small and medium-sized enterprises. 41. There are various pieces of legislation supporting young farmers. Law No. 205/2017, introduced in 2018, is aimed at encouraging young farmers who do not own land to work with landowning or retired farmers over 65 years of age. The law was also designed to foster the transfer of knowledge from one farming generation to the other, including through a three-year training period and the division of generated income between the two parties. 42. A commendable effort by the Government to make more land available to young people engaging in agriculture and social farming activities is the enactment of Law No. 109/1996 on confiscating good, including land, from the Mafia and placing them into the hands of the State so that they cannot be the object of sale and privatization but only distributed in concession. Established by article 16 of Law No. 154/2016, the Banca Nazionale delle Terre Agricole (“bank of agricultural lands”) constitutes a comprehensive inventory of the agricultural land that becomes available also following the abandonment of production and early retirement, collecting, organizing and advertising the information necessary on the natural, structural and infrastructural characteristics of such land and the terms and conditions for its sale and purchase. The bank, managed by the institute of services for the agricultural and food market, operates at the national level and encourages generational turnover in the sector. Almost all regional governments have enacted laws on “land banks”, with the aim of making public land available through rental or concession operations. 14 A regional law in Apulia also introduced environmental sustainability and organic production as a premium criterion in the beneficiary selection process,15 applying a more prominent right to food approach to land distribution. These initiatives need to be further expanded and elaborated, particularly to make sure that the time of each land concession is sufficient to incentivize medium- to long-term agricultural practices and integration into sustainable value chains. D. Workers in the food system 43. The agricultural system, although now partly mechanized, still strongly relies on agricultural workers, particularly during harvest season. In the south, farmers still employ seasonal workers from Eastern Europe, Africa and workers living in Italy who are sometimes undocumented. Numerous reports indicate that migrant workers endure difficult conditions in the olive oil, tomato and grape industries, among others (see A/HRC/42/44/Add.1). 44. According to the national institute for social protection, migrant workers comprise 35 per cent (about 1 million workers) of the total workforce. This figure does not include the thousands of migrant workers irregularly employed in fields and greenhouses. The migrant workforce is concentrated in specific sectors, particularly those in which labour law enforcement is difficult to implement and training sessions are not especially needed. The incidence of migrant workers in the agricultural sector has tripled in recent year, from 5.3 per cent in 2007 to 16.6 per cent in 2017.16 45. Regardless of sex, age, nationality or immigration status, agricultural workers are exploited and underpaid. In Italy, this is particularly severe during harvest season, and even more if workers are undocumented. 14 15 16 Andrea Povellato and Francesco Vanni, “Nuovi strumenti per le politiche fondiarie. Banca della terra e associazioni fondiarie”, Agriregionieuropa, year 13, No. 49 (June 2017). Available at https://agriregionieuropa.univpm.it/it/content/article/31/49/nuovi-strumenti-le-politiche-fondiariebanca-della-terra-e-associazioni. See art. 7 (3) (g) and (h) of Regional Regulation No. 16/2018 in the Apulia region of Italy. Islamic Human Rights Commission, “Universal periodic review (UPR) NGO alternative report (34th session October–November 2019)”, 27 March 2019, p. 4. Available at www.ihrc.org.uk/wpcontent/uploads/2019/03/UPR19marc-italy-final-final.pdf. 7