After crossing half of Africa and surviving a perilous boat trip from Libya in search of a better life in Italy, Boubacar Bailo is now contemplating suicide.

One of an army of illegal immigrants hired to harvest tomatoes in the Puglia region, Mr Bailo squats in a fetid cardboard shack restlessly waiting for a call to the fields.

Every year thousands of immigrants, many from Africa, flock to the fields and orchards of southern Italy to scrape a living as seasonal workers picking grapes, olives, tomatoes and oranges.

Broadly tolerated by authorities because of their role in the economy, they endure long hours of backbreaking work for as little as €15-€20 a day and live in squalid makeshift camps without running water or electricity.

"I never thought it would be like this in Italy. Even dogs are better off than us," said Mr Bailo, a 24-year-old from Guinea struggling to survive in an area of Puglia known as the "Red Gold Triangle" which produces 35 per cent of Italy's tomatoes.

"It's better to die than to live like this, because at least when you die your problems are over."

Things have been particularly bad this year in Puglia, whose tomatoes end up in dishes around the world, from the upscale restaurants of London to the homes of the village of San Marco just a few miles away. The economic crisis forced factories in Italy's rich north to shut down or lay off employees, so more migrants than usual - around 2,000 people - have come here in search of work.

Rains - a tomato picker's best friend because the machinery an increasing number of farm owners use to replace manual labour does not work properly on muddy grounds - have been sparse.

And a crackdown by Italy's conservative government on illegal immigration has made farmers more reluctant to hire clandestini workers, particularly those easily identifiable as foreigners because of their skin colour.

This month, the government launched an amnesty for immigrants illegally employed in cleaning or caring for the elderly by Italian families, but that does not apply to those bringing tomatoes in from the fields.

Mr Bailo, who was denied an asylum request and has no papers, says he has worked eight days in the past two months "and I didn't even put €100 in my pocket".

The going rate for illegal tomato pickers is €3.5 per cassone - a big plastic crate that, when full, weighs 350 kg.

On a good day, workers can hope to make as much as €35-€40 from labouring from dawn to dusk.

But in most cases they will have to pay a cut to the so-called caporali, middlemen who select the workforce for the farm owners and make sure the job gets done.

"It's a feudal system like in the Middle Ages. These modern slaves are handy for the economy: you can exploit them and then get rid of them when you don't need them anymore," said Father Arcangelo Maira, a local priest trying to help the immigrants.

The shanty town where Mr Bailo lives in the countryside along with 600 fellow immigrants is known as "the Ghetto". From afar, it resembles a refugee camp in any war-ravaged African country, but the reality is possibly worse.

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