(AGENPARL) – Rome, 3 June 2024
(AGENPARL) – Mon 03 June 2024 Drought emergency, meeting between Schifani and agricultural sector organisations. Agrinsieme Sicilia: “Partially satisfied. We need to do more and quickly.”
“Partial satisfaction”: this is the comment from Agrinsieme Sicilia,
the coordination that unites Confagricoltura, Cia and Copagri,
after today’s meeting with the President of the Sicilian Region, Renato Schifani and the General Manager, Dario Cartabellotta, at Palazzo d’Orleans in Palermo, to discuss measures to manage the drought emergency in agriculture.
The main news was the announcement of the allocation of 10 million euros for fodder, which will be paid out via vouchers starting from the farmers who operate in the areas most affected by the drought. Agrinsieme had proposed that these sums be paid directly to the companies, but notes that the Government’s choice of the voucher is dictated by reasons of speed. An allocation, in any case, which is believed to represent only a first down payment, absolutely insufficient for the livestock companies that are fighting for survival, for which a further financial allocation has been requested.
Agrinsieme Sicilia believes that a broader and more structured plan is needed to address the water emergency, starting from the adoption of all those measures that have been proposed by Confagricoltura, CIA, and Copagri in all the institutional tables on the crisis.
Agrinsieme Sicilia urged President Schifani on the high cost of fuel and on the issuing of the various decrees that were announced on the drought emergency, in particular the one on the construction of wells, lakes and desalination plants. Furthermore, it requested the cancellation of the bills of the Reclamation Consortia of the last years, the delimitation of the damage for arable crops, the exemption from the criteria on conditionality for the CAP premiums.
There is no time to lose. Sicilian agriculture is in danger of certain death if action is not taken with the utmost speed and across the board. And it is clear that more needs to be done.
Agrinsieme is made up of the professional organizations Cia-Agricoltori Italiani, Confagricoltura, Copagri and the central cooperatives Confcooperative FedAgriPesca, Legacoop Agroalimentare and Agci Agrital, in turn united in the acronym Alleanza Cooperative Italiane – Sector Agroalimentare. The Agrinsieme coordination represents over 2/3 of Italian agricultural companies, 60% of the value of agricultural production and of the national cultivated area, over 800 thousand people employed in the companies represented.
Palermo, 3 June 2024
The press officer
of Confagricoltura Sicilia
(for Agrinsieme Sicilia)
Bartolo Lorefice
Odg card n. 161773
