TO AVERT NEW CRISES LET’S FOCUS ON THE ECOLOGICAL TRANSITION OF ITALIAN AND EUROPEAN AGRICULTURE<\/p>\n\n
Food security in Europe and in Italy is defended by focusing on the ecological transition of agriculture not by weakening the rules of the new CAP post 2022 and the EU strategies “Farm to Fork” and “Biodiversity”.<\/p>\n\n
“Weakening the EU Farm to Fork and Biodiversity 2030 Strategies and revising the environmental standards of the new CAP post 2022 would be a serious mistake and would not solve the problems related to rising prices and availability of raw materials, problems further aggravated by the war in Ukraine that are putting European and national agribusinesses in serious difficulty. \u00a0Instead, we need, to accelerate the ecological transition of our agriculture by reviewing the models of production and the consumption of food”.<\/em><\/p>\n\n This is what 17 environmental, consumer and organic producer associations claim in a letter sent to the President of the Council, Mario Draghi, and to the Ministers Patuanelli and Cingolani. The Associations respond to the claims with which the industrial agriculture lobbies argue the need to revise the objectives of the Green Deal to address the crisis in prices and raw materials caused, only partially, by the war in Ukraine. The European Strategies that the lobbies are contesting are those that aspire to protect biodiversity and reduce the impact that intensive agricultural methods have on climate and the environment, with targets for 2030 that include reducing the use of pesticides and chemicals in fields and stables and maintaining a space for biodiversity in the agricultural landscape.<\/p>\n\n The 17 Associations, in their letter, stigmatize the instrumentality and inadequacy of a debate that uses the dramatic contingency of the war in Ukraine to blame the ecological transition for the ongoing crises in Europe. In the context of dramatic uncertainty that afflicts agriculture, it is instead necessary to focus on interventions that ensure a sustainable future for the agricultural sector, also from an economic point of view. It is surreal that instead the discussion is being switched to strategies for ecological transition that are projected over the medium and long term. In fact, the new CAP will come into force from 2023 and will be fully operational from 2025, while for many farms survival is a matter of days or weeks. It is therefore urgent to intervene in support of businesses in serious difficulty due to the escalating cost and diminished availability of raw materials with timely and targeted interventions, while also taking into consideration the financial speculation being carried out. At the same time, however, it is necessary to accelerate the replies to the major challenges of agricultural, environmental and climate sustainability, starting with the implementation of the “Farm to Fork” and “Biodiversity 2030” Strategies and the new post-2022 CAP, precisely to make agricultural and food systems less vulnerable to these shocks.\u00a0 Without adequate and effective measures to solve these global problems, the risks of new crises will increase in the future.<\/p>\n\n “The war in Ukraine is highlighting Europe’s vulnerability in its dependence on importing raw materials and energy. But the conflict is the latest in a series of events that began with the COVID pandemic and continued with the drought in North America that halved harvests, triggering speculative dynamics and a dangerous rise in prices. In a world increasingly exposed to global shocks and conflicts, we need a radical reform of our agri-food systems, to promote more resilient and sustainable production and consumption models,”<\/em> emphasize the 17 Associations. “The shy steps toward an agroecological transition expected with CAP reform cannot be thwarted by preserving the same production systems and consumption patterns that got us into this situation. It is not by increasing production through further degradation of the natural environment or by increasing dependence on fossil fuels that the problems will be solved. We need policies that promote food security, support extensive practices and respect for animal welfare, enhance the role of farmers and promote healthier diets, with a reduction of the consumption of animal products”.<\/em><\/p>\n\n Scientific evidence supports these statements, such as the recent IPCC report according to which “while agricultural development contributes to food security, unsustainable agricultural expansion, driven in part by unbalanced diets, increases ecosystem and human vulnerability and leads to competition for land and\/or water resources”. ISMEA, in analyzing the current problems of the maize supply in Italy, points out that “the dependence of livestock rearing on foreign products has become structural”: it is a large segment of our agri-food production that claims to be ‘Made in Italy’ but is based on imported feed, often produced in countries that have standards, for example on GMOs and pesticides, much less strict than European ones.<\/p>\n\n Much of the instability of agri-food systems depends on the expansion of intensive livestock farming, if we consider that 70% of Europe’s agricultural land is used for animal feed, and to this must be added the land cultivated outside the EU from which we import feed to feed a production sector that has become hypertrophic and polluting, as well as not respecting animal welfare.<\/p>\n\n For the 17 Associations, “the answer that can ensure greater security to agri-food systems in Europe is to reduce the number of animals bred, which requires a simultaneous reduction in the consumption of meat and animal products and\u00a0would allow to free up land for food crops. It would better cater to diversified, climate-friendly diets and ensure the rights of access to affordable food.”<\/em><\/p>\n\n Ploughing more land, transforming grassland and natural areas into arable land, as is being proposed to increase agricultural land for feed production, using even more pesticides and fertilizers, would dangerously increase the risk of ecosystems collapsing, reducing agriculture’s ability to respond to external shocks.<\/p>\n\n A downward revision of the objectives of the new CAP and the EU Strategies “Farm to Fork” and “Biodiversity 2030” would erase any remaining prospect of ecological transition of our agriculture, which can instead disengage from the speculative dynamics of global markets, as the organic farming sector has already been able to do in most respects, and focus on quality and sustainability.<\/p>\n\n Roma, 16 March 2022<\/p>\n\n The 17 environmental, organic farming and consumer associations that are sending this communiqu\u00e9 share the vision of an ecological transition in Italian and European agriculture that protects all farmers, citizens and the environment.<\/em><\/p>\n\n Consumer Association, ACU, AIDA, AIAB, AIAPP, Animal Equality,Associazione Italiana Biodinamica, Associazione TERRA, CIWF Italia Onlus, FederBio, Greenpeace Italia, ISDE Medici per l\u2019Ambiente, Legambiente, Lipu-BirdLife, Pro Natura, Rete Semi Rurali, Slow Food Italia, WWF Italia.<\/p>\n\n Dott. Franco Ferroni<\/p>\n\n Head of Agriculture<\/p>\n\n Coordinator #ChangeAgriculture Coalition<\/p>\n\n Senior Biodiversity Area Specialist<\/p>\n\n WWF Italia<\/p>\n\n Via Po 25\/c<\/p>\n\n 00198 ROMA<\/p>\n\n E-mail:\u00a0f.ferroni@wwf.it<\/a><\/p>\n\n Mobile. 329.8315744<\/p>\n\n Tel. Office. 06.84497254<\/p>\n\n Telework: 0733.694125<\/p>\n\n Skype: WWF.Ercmed<\/p>\n\n Follow the WWF Italia activities on this site:\u00a0www.wwf.it<\/a><\/p>\n\n Follow the activities of the #ChangeAgriculture Coalition on the website \u00a0www.cambiamoagricoltura.it<\/a>\u00a0and on the Face Book page: https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/CambiamoAgricoltura<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" the associations that coordinate the activities of #cambiamoagricoltura write a press release to prevent the weakening of the latest strategies of the new CAP (PAC)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":7896,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"off","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","wds_primary_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1450],"tags":[1737,1738,1739,1528],"class_list":["post-7978","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-from-our-networks","tag-cambiamoagricoltura-en","tag-coalition","tag-ecological-transition","tag-pac-en"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/org.wwoof.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7978","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/org.wwoof.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/org.wwoof.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/org.wwoof.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/org.wwoof.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7978"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/org.wwoof.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7978\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7981,"href":"https:\/\/org.wwoof.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7978\/revisions\/7981"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/org.wwoof.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7896"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/org.wwoof.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7978"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/org.wwoof.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7978"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/org.wwoof.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7978"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}