Coldiretti Venice: “Beekeeping more productive but more attentive to the environment”
The New Community Agricultural Policy which will go into effect starting from January 2023 contained in a single document of 3609 pages, today has been masterfully explained in its main strands by Prof. Angelo Frascarelli, President of Ismea as well as professor of the University of Perugia at the Department of Agricultural, food and environmental sciences. Maximum expert on the subject, Prof Frascarelli addressed an audience of about three hundred people including associates, technicians and representatives of the institutions who spoke this morning at the Russott Hotel in via Orlanda 4 in Mestre in a conference organized by Coldiretti Venice on “The Strategic Plan for the CAP 2023-2027 the choices of Italy and the opportunities for Venetian companies” focused on what will be the great change for the agricultural sector.
Andrea Colla, president of Coldiretti Venezia, opened the meeting and thanked those present recalling the immense difficulty that the agricultural sector has been going through in recent months “The time is over when our country and Europe believed that it is possible to far produce on other continents where the cost of labor and products is lower, relocating many of the vital sectors, including our agri-food sector. We aim for sovereignty, food, unfair competition that continues to fight a sound our products, feeding with a fake Made in Italy market that costs us 10 billion euros a year. We must commit ourselves to invest the money given to us by Europe on the infrastructures that allow our fresh product to travel in the shortest possible time to world markets, such as fruit and vegetables or fish, where Chioggia con Venezia is the most great navy of Italy “.
And coming to the CAP, it is now defined for a good 90%, in fact there are very few steps missing and the programming can be said to be concluded. At the end of this month, the EU Commission will decide in response to the comments made by Italy on the strategic plans and by November Italy will have to approve them to get to the start of the new agricultural policy scheduled for January 1, 2023.
The new CAP will have roughly the same financial endowment as the previous programming, a gradual convergence of the value of the securities and good support for entrepreneurs.
“In fact, we have already entered the new CAP – Frascarelli explained – because the sowing of this period will fall back into the new programming. For Italy, 7.3 billion euros are envisaged for direct payments (49.5%), rural development (44.8%) and market measures (5.7%) ”. Frascarelli explained in detail the architecture of the new agricultural policy which will have these objectives: the competitiveness of farms, the protection of the environment, the conservation of landscapes and biodiversity, and support for generational change. Farmers will be asked to rotate crops in order to reinvigorate the fertility of the soil, but also to allocate a part of the surface to non-productive areas (margins of fields, uncultivated). Farmers who are organic or who use certified integrated farming methods will be rewarded. The future will also be closely linked to innovation. Many questions were asked by the public present to understand the details of the new CAP policy.
“From now on, further meetings on organizational matters will start in each area of the province to best accompany our members in this step – specified the director of Coldiretti Venezia who was responsible for the conclusions of the conference- we have a duty to support our companies worried by price increases, affected by drought and bad weather, by wildlife and by an anomalous proliferation of insects, not to mention that already in the near future companies will be engaged in contrasting the arrival of synthetic meat on our shelves. It does not end here because Europe is asking us to comply with a new directive on pesticides which provides for up to 70% less use of chemicals, a process that can be absolutely shared as a future objective as long as it is guided and sustainable. Substitute means cannot arrive without consent. So we look to the future hoping to protect our agricultural production by relying on research in particular cisgenetics that helps us to produce with ever greater quality and environmental sustainability “.