Novellara

In more detail

In Europe, only Britain has more Sikhs than Italy. Britain counted 524,140 in its 2021 census (England and Wales, religion question). Italy has no census count, only estimates: about 100,000 (CESNUR, reported in 2024) up to 220,000 (press reports, 2017 to 2023).

Parmesan is made only in five provinces of northern Italy: Parma, Reggio Emilia, Modena, Bologna left of the Reno, and Mantua right of the Po, and its milk is produced there too. Local men used to milk the cows. By the late 1980s many Italians were turning away from the work, and Sikh men from Punjab, in India, began to arrive. Some early arrivals even worked in circuses. Many took the jobs in the cowsheds.

The first milking starts around four in the morning, and again in the afternoon, often seven days a week, with no holidays. Calves come at any hour, so the milker lives by the farm, and the job usually comes with a house. A suitable home is one of Italy’s rules for bringing your family over; the law also asks for a sufficient income. Families joined them, and their children grew up in Italian schools. By 2024, Italy had 58 gurdwaras, Sikh places of worship, most in reused buildings.

That’s part of why: a job at four in the morning, and the house that came with it.

Notes and caveats

• The milking roster in the film is illustrative, not a real dairy’s. Its surnames are common Italian and Sikh surnames, with no first names, and Italian names stay in it from start to finish.
• Italy has no census count of Sikhs, so the film gives no single number. Academic estimates from 2012 and 2013 (about 84,000 to 115,000) sit near the low end of the range; the higher figures are press reports, which often repeat each other. Every estimate is below Britain’s census figure.
• The hours are as the BBC reported them for these dairies: about 4 to 8 in the morning, then 2.30 to 6.30 in the afternoon. “Often” seven days a week, because the BBC says it is common, not universal.
• The research describes the milker’s house as usually arranged by the farm owner, next to the farm. Not every job comes with one.
• The rule is article 29(3) of Italy’s 1998 immigration law, which asks for suitable housing and a minimum income. We did not check what the rule was in the late 1980s, so the film attaches no year to it.
• The 58 is from a 2024 note by an EU-funded research project on Sikh temples (58 of Europe’s 140 gurdwaras). It does not say who counted, so the film says “Italy had”, and the press says about 60. The same note says about 95 percent are reused buildings, such as warehouses, shops and houses. Novellara’s gurdwara opened in 2000, paid for by the community; the film does not call it the first of anything.
• Sikh men milk the cows. The film does not say they make the cheese, or that they saved it. They took the work because it was there: the research rejects explanations such as “Punjab looks like the Po valley”.

What the film leaves out

the research says the concentration of Sikhs around Reggio Emilia is due to the work, to family reunification, and to relatives following those already settled. Some of the first arrivals worked in factories. Not every Sikh in Italy works with cows: many work in the fields, especially in Lazio, south of Rome, others drive trucks or open shops and restaurants, and for many the dairy job was a first step. Another large community lives around Cremona, in Lombardy, where the dairies make Grana Padano, outside the Parmesan area. And not every Sikh farm worker in Italy has had a fair deal: workers around Latina, in Lazio, have been documented as underpaid and abused. That is a different part of Italy from these dairies, and the film does not cover it.