CAMPOBASSO. Coldiretti Molise applauds the approval of the Legislative Decree on agricultural aid launched by the Government. With this text, which contains urgent provisions for agricultural, fishing and aquaculture businesses, “the Government – stated the regional President of Coldiretti Molise, Claudio Papa – gives concrete responses to the mobilizations that Coldiretti has carried out in Europe, to national and local level with hundreds of assemblies in the area and over 200 thousand members involved, including the several hundreds who participated in the great ‘Orgoglio Coldiretti’ event, held in Campobasso last 30 April”.
According to an analysis by Coldiretti, one in three agricultural businesses will be able to benefit from the debt moratorium included in the Decree in question, as more than 145 thousand agricultural businesses have recorded a decrease of at least 20% in turnover of the year 2023 compared to that of the year 2022. “The suspension of the payment for 1 year of the principal part of the mortgage installments – specifies Papa – defends a sector under pressure from the increase in bank interest rates and production costs at in the face of a collapse in agricultural prices”.
From listening to thousands of members throughout Italy, it also emerged that the main critical issue complained about by agricultural entrepreneurs is the enormous number of wild boars present in the area (in Molise there are over 40 thousand). For this reason, stated the Regional Director of Coldiretti Molise, Aniello Ascolese, “we hope for a strong commitment from the Region so that all the measures put in place for the reduction of these animals which for years have been bringing hundreds of companies to their knees become operational soon. agricultural and livestock sectors, already severely tested by the enormous growth in production costs, and which have also become a serious risk for the safety of citizens, causing road accidents and increasingly reaching inhabited centres”. Therefore, the use of the army to combat wildlife, as foreseen in the legislative decree, and the interventions against ASF (African swine fever) with the allocation of a further 20 million euros, are good.
With the Decree just approved we also begin to have the first concrete answers on the unfair practices front with the introduction of a faster payment mechanism for farmers who are damaged and where Ismea’s work on average production costs is strengthened. Furthermore, after years in which Coldiretti asked for the issuing of the suitable areas decree on ground-mounted photovoltaics, a fair intervention is also arriving to stop the speculation of large investment funds which is putting agricultural production in difficulty in many areas of the country.
Coldiretti is not against renewables, as demonstrated by the strong participation in the Pnnr measure for photovoltaic systems on the roofs of stables and farmhouses, but for the Organization the winning model is that of energy transition which sees agricultural companies as protagonists through, for example for example, energy communities, solar systems on roofs and sustainable agrivoltaics suspended from the ground which allow farmers’ income to be integrated with renewable energy production, obtaining a positive impact on crops and the territory.
According to a study by Coldiretti Giovani Impresa, only by using the roofs of stables, farmhouses, warehouses, barns, processing laboratories and agricultural structures would it be possible to recover a useful surface area of 155 million square meters of panels with the production of 28,400Gwh of solar energy, equal to the overall annual energy consumption of a region like Veneto.
Also according to the Divulga study centre, assuming that a system is already installed on 10% of the roofs, the simple use of the available buildings could generate a photovoltaic power of between 59 and 77 GW, a quantity sufficient to cover the expected increase in renewable energy from the National Integrated Energy and Climate Plan (PNIEC) to 2030.
As regards the problems of the navy, the appointment of an extraordinary commissioner for the “blue crab” emergency is significant, as requested in the letter sent some time ago by the president of Coldiretti Ettore Prandini to the Minister of Agriculture Francesco Lollobrigida.
Finally, the simplification provisions are important and should allow the Control Room for the water crisis to approve, by 30 September 2024, a plan of urgent interventions to combat water scarcity and to strengthen and adapt water infrastructure especially in a period like this characterized by climate change with extreme climatic events and increasingly widespread drought.
In this context, great attention must also be paid to the Reclamation Consortia which today manage water resources. These bodies must be put in a position to operate at their best and the debt situation in which the Basso Molise Consortium finds itself, for example, requires intervention by the Region, requested several times by Coldiretti, which can allow it to provide efficient services and at a sustainable cost for companies.
