WORLD WORLDWIDE ITALY News Journal Update - (en) Italy, UCADI #179: Agricultural Europe and European elections (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

 The creation of a common agricultural policy was one of the founding

reasons for the constitution of the European Union; when the delegations
of the founding countries met in Stresa in 1958, the priority mandate of
the Governments was to ensure the certainty and abundance of
agricultural supplies, whatever situation the world market might
experience in the future. The instrument identified was essentially the
setting of minimum price levels for agricultural products, which
generate enormous surpluses. The usual procedure adopted by the European
Union was to pay exporters to sell such products abroad outside the
common market.
Initially, a policy of subsidies to support their incomes was launched
to support community farmers, but since the 1990s the system of
production "quotas" has been adopted, in order to guarantee farmers a
minimum level of product prices and to divide a guaranteed production
quota equally between the various EU countries. This choice has had
negative results especially for parenthesis Italy (the issue of milk
quotas will be remembered) since the various Italian governments have
not been able to negotiate quotas for the country adequate for its
production capacity and internal needs. The result was a penalization of
the Italian agri-food sector and of Mediterranean countries in general,
which were unable to lobby to defend their agriculture. The result was
to adopt legislation and measures at EU level that favored the
agricultural sector of the countries of Northern Europe and France,
making room for and profiting from the financing of community policies
deriving from the application of community choices.
In 1962 the European Agricultural Guidance and Guarantee Fund (EAGGF)
was established which was supposed to ensure the maintenance of food
prices in the EEC countries by establishing special companies
responsible for purchasing production surpluses at an intervention price
slightly lower than the indicative one and ensuring that these were sold
to third countries with exports below cost, or used for the production
of biofuels or, in the worst case scenario, removed from the market and
destroyed (who doesn't remember the tractors that crush mountains of
citrus fruits!).
Since its inception, the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) has set itself
four objectives:

Ensure a fair standard of living for the agricultural population and
satisfy farmers thanks to the intervention price and ensuring that the
production price does not fall below this level.
Orient agricultural businesses towards greater production capacity
(limiting production factors, increasing technological development and
using better agronomic techniques).
Stabilizing the markets.
Ensuring affordable prices for consumers. Primary products such as wheat
and potatoes which were typical of France, Germany and Holland were
favored, damaging Italy which instead produced citrus fruits, olive oil,
wine, etc.

The reform of the CAP in 2013

The Common Agricultural Policy drags on in the European Union, dominated
by other problems and greater attention is paid to the development of
industry and the distribution of production quotas among its various
sectors, proceeding with a rationalization of the supply chains, the
specialization of the economies that they abandon some sectors to
concentrate resources on others, as happens for example in Italy with
the abandonment of chemistry. It is the progressive entry of new
countries into the Union which, having become more solid after the
signing of the Maastricht Treaty and the adoption of the euro, at least
for an area of the countries that agree to be part of it that the
problem will begin to arise of a radical review of the CAP.
But we will have to wait until 2013 because the EU redefines its
objectives in the agricultural field by declaring that it wants to "help
farmers produce sufficient quantities of food for Europe, guarantee safe
and quality food at affordable prices, ensure a fair standard of living
to farmers, protecting them from excessive price volatility, market
crises and imbalances within the food supply chain, investing in the
modernization of their farms, maintaining prosperous rural communities
across the EU, creating and maintaining jobs in the food industry,
protect the environment, animal welfare and biodiversity, mitigate
climate change through sustainable exploitation of environmental
resources": the watchword is "eco-sustainable development".

Since then, the so-called pillar policy has been launched, which is
financed for the period 2014-2020 with 408.31 billion, 38% of the EU
budget. and which has as its objective the reduction of inequalities
between the agricultures of the various EU countries, the valorisation
of the employment of young people in agriculture, orienting exports,
favoring intervention in support of those operators who operate within
low-income markets and on those living in areas subject to natural
constraints.
The action strategy is divided into "Pillars", the first of which
consists of supporting farmers' income through the direct provision of
financing to those who cultivate their land while respecting
environmental food safety and animal welfare; in the adoption of market
measures which pass through the creation of a Common Market Organization
(CMO) for agricultural products. Norms and rules valid throughout the EU
are issued which regulate imports and exports of agricultural goods
within the EU and outside the EU by individual member countries; a
balance between supply and demand has been established, the problems
arising from global competition have been addressed, the relationship to
economic and financial crises and climate change have factors that
determine the volatility of the costs of production factors. Thus,
problems such as those of milk quotas in the storage of agricultural
products, etc. are found as a solution. As the financial arm of the CAP,
the European Agricultural Guarantee Fund is created, co-financed by the
member countries, which replaces the functions of the EAGGF.
The second "Pillar" concerns the modernization of agricultural
companies, the promotion of the diffusion of professional training,
technologies, innovation as well as the maintenance and encouragement of
best practices, the relaunch or development of rural areas and rural
communities through aid for the introduction of new agricultural
activities, creation of infrastructures and aid for production
diversification that also takes into account climate changes and the
distribution of production among different populations. These
interventions are aimed at increasing the competitiveness of the various
sectors on both the domestic and international markets, the development
of forest areas and their profitability, the protection of the
environment and climate change, the promotion of generational turnover
and the employment of workers to the sector, with particular reference
to the inclusion of young people, to the provision of tools for risk
management by providing income support in the event of crop destruction
due to climatic events or infestations.
However, to benefit from this regulation and related funding, farmers
must respect certain mandatory management criteria relating to their
commitment and must undertake to ensure public health, animal welfare
and animal safety and the food safety of the communities with their
production. interested parties, as well as good agronomic and
environmental conditions, in order to make the CAP greener and more
sustainable. Finally, the labeling rules for goods produced and placed
on the market must be strictly respected, so that consumers can verify
the non-use of pesticides, the introduction of transgenic crops, and
anything else necessary for the protection
rigorous of the environment.

The new common agricultural policy plan 2023/2027

In 2023 the EU launched its new five-year plan for agriculture, choosing
equity and effectiveness as objectives to promote green Europe. The aim
of the plan is to provide more targeted support to small-scale farms.
Strengthen the contribution of agriculture to the EU's environmental and
climate objectives, allow Member States greater flexibility in adapting
measures to local conditions. To achieve these objectives, the European
Union commits its resources to create a new "green" architecture based
on environmental conditions that farmers must respect, adopting
additional voluntary measures, providing direct payments and more
targeted and planned rural development interventions strategic, with an
effectiveness-based approach.
To implement the new CAP plan, the European Commission has launched a
regulation that transposes the strategic plans and has modified the
regulations relating to the common organization of the markets (CMO) of
agricultural products, the quality regimes, modifying the measures in
favor of the regions remote: A further regulation has been prepared on
the financing, management and monitoring of the various activities of the.

PAC. All activities are monitored and Member States must report annually
on progress.
Each EU state must draw up a strategic plan containing a detailed and
structured analysis that identifies specific needs in order to then draw
up a strategic plan, in which the member state specifies how it intends
to use CAP funding. The tools used and the specific objectives indicated
must be indicated and the individual plans must be approved by the
Commission to ensure their consistency with EU objectives. Plans must be
monitored and verified with monitoring of results, checked to ensure
that they do not distort the single market or create excessive burdens
for beneficiaries or administrations. The Commission may review the
reports and propose recommendations to improve performance, if necessary.
The influx of this river of agricultural resources is not without
obligations for farmers who will have to allocate 25% of their payments
towards obligations and incentives for the conservation of carbon-rich
soils through the protection of swamps and peatlands, thus encouraging
the adoption of ecological regimes and plans aimed at supporting and/or
encouraging the use of agricultural practices beneficial to the climate
and the environment, which involves the reduction of the cultivable
surface area, periodic crop rotation to mitigate the land exploitation.
Demonstrating that after 60 years of common agricultural policy the EU
has achieved a rebalancing of the agricultural economies of the various
countries, one of the key characteristics of the approved CAP and that
member countries will have to ensure that the value of all payment
entitlements is raises at least 85% of the national average amount in
the EU; all countries with a level of direct support per hectare below
90% of the EU average will have to reduce the gap by 50% by 2027; Member
States will be allowed to reduce payments by up to 85%. direct (of EUR
60,000 or more per year) per farmer, and to introduce a ceiling of EUR
100,000 per year; Member States will have to redistribute at least 10%
of their direct payment allocations from larger to small and
medium-sized companies. The political objective of this measure is clear
and is that of a harmonious development of the sector.

EU enlargement policy and common agricultural policy

If we take into account and draw the consequences from the
reconstruction of the Common Agricultural Policy, we understand the
interest of countries with a prevailing economy in which agriculture has
a prevalent, or at least important, role in asking to join the Union.
This consideration is valid above all for understanding the reasons and
consequences that a feared entry of Ukraine into the European Union
would have without first proceeding with more than ten-year plans to
adapt its agriculture, to create the necessary conditions of
compatibility with those of EU and to ensure that with the current rules
the majority of community funding does not end up in Ukraine, to the
complete detriment and decrease of the agricultural economies of EU
countries, destroying the current balance in access to funding, allowing
dumping operations unfair, as happened with the sale of Ukrainian wheat
at reduced prices on the EU market, made possible by the so-called
"solidarity corridors" which enormously damaged the Hungarian, Polish,
Slovak, Bulgarian and Romanian producers who took action to interrupt
them. The farmers of the EU countries are well aware of this danger and
they try in every way to defend themselves, to the point that for this
and other reasons they have reached the point of establishing and
reviving farmers' parties, similar to the old agrarian parties.
This trend is facilitated by the emergence of other concomitant
problems, first of all, the ecological and environmental one, which
forces farmers to review the methods and role of their way of producing
such as: excessive exploitation of the soil, the use of fertilizers and
herbicides, the relationship between cultivated surfaces and areas
reserved for watercourses, livestock breeding methods and animal
conditions, arable land and space intended for photovoltaic systems and
the installation of wind turbines, and much more. Their appearance in
the electoral arena risks having a significant impact on the results of
the next European elections, as happened in the spring of 2023 in the
Netherlands, on the occasion of the municipal and provincial elections,
and was repeated in Slovakia.

The Editorial Staff

https://www.ucadi.org/2023/11/26/europa-agricola-e-elezioni-europee/
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