Martina's challenge: a new model for agriculture
The minister for agricultural, food and forestry policy outlined key points in his program for the recovery of the primary sector. Efficiency in the use of financing, specific measures for new enterprises and a policy for mechanization are the points which qualify a plan intended for restoring competitiveness to agriculture, a winning image
The crisis the agricultural sector is slipping into is in need of special attention, an attack strategy. The government has fielded a package of measures for the renewal of farms and work on a number of fronts, from support for young farming entrepreneurs to operations for the environment and control of the land. On another side, the EXPO 2015 event will shed light on relations between agriculture and food and underscore the values as well as the problems in the Italian agro-food system.
Mr. Minister, leadership of the European semester takes the Italian political sphere into close contact with real conditions in the European Union and Member States. How do you evaluate the conditions of our agriculture as compared to those in the other countries?
The Italian agricultural system contains many strong points and some we are facing that are critical by implementing concrete measures to allow the entire sector to take an important leap of quality. The primary objective is to favor the formation of new enterprises and thus the possibility for creating jobs. To achieve these results we have taken up the issue of work, simplification and increasing the competitiveness of our farming businesses. With the Campolibero (FreeField) package inserted into the Competition Law we are providing the first operational response. Among the measures in the decree are plans for providing 40% taxation credit for new enterprise networks and for innovation with investments of up to € 400,000 plus investments of up to for the creation € 50,000 for the creation of e-commerce platforms.
The issue of work, especially for young people, is at the center of the government’s planning. What are the job prospects offered today by farming and what are the instruments which can facilitate young farming entrepreneurs in this sector?
Promoting young farming enterprises in agriculture is one of our principal objectives. Again in the Campolibero decree there are very real measures for favoring jobs for young people in the agricultural sector. For example, there are plans for zero-interest mortgages for farming enterprises led by farmers under age 40, 19% deductions for leasing land directly by young farmers and farming entrepreneurs under the age of 35, incentives for hiring young people by lifting the labor cost for enterprises by one-third. With the funds allocated under the new planning in the European Common Agricultural Policy we will then allocate € 80 million per year for increasing direct assistance to farming enterprises led by the under 40s by 25%. There are a great number of young people who go into studies in the sector with a boom for registrations in agronomics and we must give them an immediate response. I think agro-food can genuinely provide an important contribution to the battle against joblessness among the young.
The big EXPO 2015 event is focused on the theme of nutrition and agro-food production chains, from production to consumption. From the cultural point of view this is thus an occasion for bringing the general public and the world of agriculture closer but from the political point of view, what is the message?
The biggest message from the Universal Exposition concerns the greatest challenge we are facing in the coming years: how to implement concrete policies to guarantee healthy and safe food for a world population which will hit the number of nine billion people by 2050. For six months in Milan we will be dealing with this and other important issues – like the one on food security and the fight against waste – with more than 140 countries. Expo 2015 will be an event, a platform with enormous potential, a platform allowing discussion on agricultural models and best practices for guaranteeing access to food and water in the coming decades. We want to build a platform for useful dealing to arrive on time for the big appointment at the end of 2015 for updating the United Nations Millennium Goals.
Recent news coverage reports up front the problem of hydrogeographic dissolution and the lack of maintenance in rural areas. What strategies can be applied to give agriculture a function for the effective control of the land and for associating this with strategies for the environment and civil protection?
What happened recently in Genoa and in other areas of Italy is evidence of the fragility of Italian territory. I think it is evident that our country, at the level of safeguarding the land, still has a lot to do. Stringent norms are needed to limit the consumption of the land. There is a measure under study in the lower house on the consumption of the land and the re-use of land that has been built on. Moreover, we are working on a plan for the management of risks with the new funding in the Rural Development Plans with allocations of € 1.6 billion up to 2020. And finally, for helping farms cope with the latest wave of bad weather we have advanced payments to a million agricultural enterprises of some € 1.4 billion by about two months. These are important resources which can be used in some cases for restarting farms because we are aware that the first control applied against hydrogeographic dissolution is made up of good agriculture.
The agricultural mechanization market has been reporting a very substantial and ongoing decline over the past seven years. At present 19,000 tractors are registered annually in our country which are about half of those registered in France or Germany. This harms the machinery industry and at the same time weakens the farming system...
The sector has been hard hit in Italy, and not only, but for us the effects are even more evident. In recent planning more than € 3 billion were earmarked for the modernization of farms, including for steps to be taken in the machinery inventory. At present spending has reached 72% and we have to make the best use of these resources before the end of 2015. This is no longer the time for losing EU funding. For the period up to 2020 we have some € 6 billion for investing in material immobilizations. We want to use these resources for the recovery of competitiveness, the profitability of farms and overcoming some structural gaps. There is no doubt that the future of our agriculture must move through innovations and the technological renewal of machinery available for farming.
The agricultural mechanization market has been supported in the past with measures for scrapping machinery. This type of intervention, however, carries the risk of drugging the market by creating successive imbalance. What measures can be studied for adding mechanization as a structural factor in policies and financing for agriculture?
Mechanization has to return as a strategic point in an overall plan for the development of the farming sector. For this reason there is the need for sustainable interventions over the medium and long term as well. We are working on a strategy based on more instruments. At the national level, in the ministry we will propose an agreement between the Ministry Mipaaf, ABI (Italian Bankers Association) and the regions for the possible use of European financing for the renewal of the machinery inventory, also for the share of the financing provided by the farms, by facilitating additions to the plan on purchase prices and the financing conditions of the credit institutes. In the coming weeks we will present the draft for discussions in the venue of the State-Regions Conference. Along with RDP investments, consideration will then be given to interventions which can be set up within the framework of the Rural Development Plans funds for regional development. I’m thinking, for example, of export support which could come to more than € 455 million and where space could be found for this.
