Coldiretti Arezzo celebrates 80 years of history by relaunching peasant protagonism together with a new pact with consumers. The key words coordinated by Director Raffaello Betti that resonate in a House of Energy packed in every seat are transparency, reciprocity, dignity, less bureaucracy and legality.
The Section Presidents of the province and the representatives of the Young Business and Women’s Coldiretti movements and the Pensioners’ Association also spoke with him. The farmers who are now looking at Europe, at the new Europe that will emerge from the polls in June, are asking for nothing else, with a new awareness: it is there, in the buildings of Brussels, that the decisive matches are being played. The time of the battles that led to historic results for farmers, from the agrarian reform of 1952 to the orientation law of 2001, from the abolition of the IMU to the law against synthetic food up to the Campagna Amica project, is there to remind us that nothing comes by chance. There are over 500 thousand farmers who took part in the large widespread assembly of Coldiretti which was celebrated in every province of the region to celebrate the first 80 years. A yellow tsunami that put the history and future of the association at the center, founded in 1944 by the “founding father” Paolo Bonomi, becoming the largest agricultural organization in Italy and Europe. For Coldiretti, a new season of commitment and struggle begins to protect the income of agricultural businesses, the health of citizens and the protection of Made in Tuscany agri-food.
Among the issues at the center of the assembly was the need to guarantee transparency on the origin of food with the collection of one million signatures to promote a European law that requires the clear indication of the origin on all food labels. “It is no longer tolerable to witness scenes like those experienced during the protest at Brenner – explains Director Raffaello Betti – where we saw hams, tomato paste, fruit and vegetables arriving which, after the last transformation, essentially became Italian products, with foreign food imports reaching an all-time high in 2023. The elimination of the customs code for the origin of food products must be a priority. Only food produced and processed in Italy can be Italian food. Only in this way can we guarantee profitability for agricultural businesses. This is a new chapter in our pact with the consumer citizen.”
The other emergency, which affects the agricultural businesses of the province very closely, is that of protecting the territory from the invasion of uncontrolled wildlife with the need for immediate interventions to save the national agri-food heritage that is increasingly under siege. According to Coldiretti, over 20 million damages have been reported to crops by ungulates throughout the region. The main calamity is represented by wild boars with 80% of the total damage followed by roe deer and fallow deer. There are a total of 400 thousand ungulates in the countryside: 200 wild boars, 160 thousand roe deer, 7,000 fallow deer and 6,000 deer (Tuscany Region data). Coldiretti himself had put forward, a few weeks ago, some proposals on the occasion of the anniversary of law 3 on the protection of wild fauna and hunting to make it more compliant with the new scenario. “The proliferation of species such as wild boars is putting crops and safety in the countryside at risk – underlines Coldiretti – We ask for urgent measures to counter these threats. We are ready to fight.”
Furthermore, all the issues still open in Europe were addressed, linked to the requests against unfair imports, fake made in Italy or the request for an invasion plan, up to the debt moratorium in favor of agricultural companies that have invested and which in the last two years have suffered from the increase in interest rates and serious income problems. Also on the table are the burning dossiers which, thanks to Coldiretti, have been blocked or postponed such as the regulation on packaging, on the restoration of nature and on the use of pesticides which would have reduced agricultural production by 30%. “Our trade union and technical presence in Brussels is constant and methodical. We work side by side with other agricultural organizations to create a common front and strengthen our demands and – concludes Coldiretti – The invitation we address to the Tuscan parliamentarians who will be elected in Europe is to choose the agriculture commission to count more and dismantle the vulgar environmental ideology that characterized the last government. Our future will also depend on their ability to work as a team in the interests of agricultural businesses, Tuscany and our country.”
