In all the farms the flags of Coldiretti pride and the well-attended provincial assemblies in Montalto Uffugo, Reggio Calabria and Lamezia Terme. Over the last year, uncontrolled wildlife has caused around two hundred million euros worth of damage to agriculture, with cultivated fields literally razed to the ground, to which are added problems caused by wild imports of food from abroad, with production costs going to stars and prices paid in camps below survival levels.
This is the alarm raised by the assemblies organized simultaneously by Coldiretti throughout the national territory, with the record participation of over fifty thousand farmers, to ask for immediate solutions. A crucial day for an organization that celebrates its eightieth anniversary this year. The damage caused by wild animals is only minimally reimbursed and often after many years, a situation that has led many to give up reporting the attacks they have suffered.
Among other things, the few compensations that arrive never cover the real value of the destroyed product or the killed animal. To give an example, a producer of fine wine who has had his vineyard devastated by wild boars will only be compensated for the simple value of the grapes.
Wild boars are a danger to farmers and citizens. Wild boars are the greatest danger also for citizens, with 170 road accidents with deaths and injuries caused in 2023 by impacts with wild boars and other wild animals, according to Coldiretti analysis on Asaps data, an increase of 8% compared to to the previous year.
Added to the damage to crops was the alarm of African swine fever, the disease not transmissible to humans which the wild boars present in the area today risk spreading in the countryside, endangering pig farms in the area. Hence the request that bounces from north to south from the Coldiretti assemblies to put an immediate stop to the proliferation of wild animals, giving farmers the opportunity to defend their lands.
In fact, there is a lack of extraordinary regional containment plans and effective regulatory tools to defend the territory from a real invasion.
Stop unfair practices
The other problem that weighs on company balance sheets is the collapse of prices paid to producers in many symbolic sectors, starting with wheat, aggravated by the phenomenon of unfair practices. Coldiretti was the first and only association to denounce a multinational, Lactalis, because it had unilaterally modified the agreements and had not paid the agreed price to the farmers. After 5 months, the Ministry Inspectorate sanctioned the French company after having found its unfair conduct in hundreds of cases. An epochal fact for an action that Coldiretti farmers now want to extend to all supply chains.
The threat of fakes in Italy
And national food sovereignty is also threatened by the invasion of foreign products with food imports increasing by 60% in the last decade, reaching a record value of 65 billion euros in Italy, according to the Coldiretti analysis on Istat data. Products often come from countries that do not respect the same rules of food and environmental safety and respect for workers’ rights and which are often passed off as tricolor by taking advantage of the customs code that allows them to be “Italianized” thanks to minimal processing. A dramatic phenomenon against which Coldiretti brought ten thousand farmers to the borders of Brenner, launching a great mobilization for a popular European initiative law proposal on the transparency of what we bring to the table, with the collection of one million signatures. The campaign can be supported by signing at all Campagna Amica farmers’ markets and in the Coldiretti offices and will also be promoted on social media with the hashtag nofakeinitaly .
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