3.46pm – Wednesday 12 June 2024
Dear director Franceschi,
I am Giuliano Preghenella, I am writing to you on behalf of the newly established Associazione Libertà Agricola Trentina (LAT) these reflections regarding the recent 129th Assembly of the Trentina Cooperation, we would be grateful if you could give us the space in the Letters to the Editor section.
Dear Director, as members of the Trentina Cooperation, we would like to express some reflections on the 129th Assembly, followed by us on the YouTube channel. First of all, we send our best wishes for a speedy recovery to President Simoni.
We appreciated the speech of Father Francesco Patton, Custos of the Holy Land, we are close to him in this sad moment. We regret that the speech by Paolo Magri, CEO of ISPI, was not made available. We believe it would have been a valuable training opportunity and we hope that a specific section can be created to recover it.
Moving on to the reports, we are concerned about what emerged from the words of Italo Monfredini, vice-president of the social sector, but in this context deputy of the president, regarding the sharp slowdown in productivity in Trentino. Since 2000, in fact, there has been a gap of 20% compared to the surrounding regions, with a decrease in GDP per capita of 4.7% from 2001 to 2019, compared to growth of more than 20% in comparable regions.
But what sounded like an alarm bell for us farmers was the short and ordinary list of proposals to improve the agricultural sector, put forward by Stefano Albasini, vice president of the Federation. We are not. That’s something else we need.
Part of those proposals would represent further expenses for us farmers who are already burdened by disastrous profitability if compared in this case too with the neighboring territories. We only remember one fact because it is significant and it comes from the Rica del Crea portal: in Alto Adige farmers are remunerated on average a third more agricultural products than us in Trentino.
The paucity of the proposals put forward by the representative of the agricultural sector causes us serious alarm because if these proposals are the result of an internal discussion with the leaders of the agricultural cooperatives this indicates the worrying desire to keep us farmers in a state of semi-poverty which is not in line with cooperative principles.
We need a very urgent discussion with the social base to bring these administrators back down to earth and help them understand our real conditions and needs which it is good to reiterate are not the request for contributions or tenders as some like to make us subject to further constraints, here there is a need for the opposite, there is a need to free ourselves from snares and snares, from rigid rules set by ideology, there is a need to apply what research already makes available today, which however someone on the threshold of retirement does not want to apply, we need to take an example from other territories, stopping telling ourselves that we are the best, that everyone copies and looks to us as an example because it is not true, the data exposed by Italo Monfredini demonstrate the opposite, demonstrate that we are on the verge of bankruptcy.
Claiming that we are the best only serves to pull the wool over the eyes to allow certain figures to constantly remain in power. In fact, the same people have always represented us. They can also remain in their place as long as they wish and have the strength, but it is essential that space is left for those who want to work and make our Trentino progress.
Even experts in the sector agree that this system needs to be completely reformed, so much so that the professor of economics at the University of Trento Michele Andreaus says in a recent interview: «I perceive it as a system of power that uses power, not to achieve objectives, but to self-perpetuate.”
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Trentino Agricultural Freedom Association (LAT)
 * COOPERATION: «AN URGENT CONFRONTATION WITH THE SOCIAL BASIS IS NEEDED, TO BRING THE ADMINISTRATORS BACK TO EARTH»){kind=link}