The Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) drawn up by the European Union it does not help biodiversity. Financial resources should be allocated first of all to agricultural practices that make it possible to mitigate and compensate for climate change. More support needs to be given to crops such as legumes and to the development of organic farming.
Let's think about what comes to the table. The Italian Coalition #CambiamoAgriculture thus addresses the newly elected to the European Parliament. He wants a change of pace and strategy that is also useful for the other countries of the Union which have conflicting views on agricultural and food issues. A challenge with thinking about what and how it is produced. An initiative that brings together economic ambitions, circular economy and well-being.
The Coalition brings together the most representative organizations of the agricultural and green world. Sort of an alarmed syndication for the divisions within the Union which are worth around 100 billion euros in funding. About 2014 billion have been allocated for the years 2020-85.
Basically, the request to the newly elected is to have a completely new approach to the world of agriculture and food in general. For the parliamentarians who will travel between Strasbourg and Brussels there is a real handbook of things to do. Not only for economic interests, but above all for the protection of products that fill shopping carts. Which political group will be more involved? Whoever manages to really change European guidelines (at least for the next seven years) will have earned the consent of organizations such as Federbio, WWF, Legambiente, FAI, AIAB. Use 38% of EU budget resources allocated to the Common Agricultural Policy after 2020 to combat climate change and halt the loss of biodiversity.
The perverse subsidies of the 2016 choices, reads the Coalition's appeal, have reduced greenhouse gas emissions by a mere 2% compared to the total emissions due to the set of intensive agricultural and zootechnical practices which exceed 20% of the total. On the tables of Europeans there are still hundreds of "enemy" products of green agriculture. If biodiversity is truly declining, as FAO recently said, there is a risk of losing more than 1 million animal and plant species due to human activities. Devastating effects on agriculture and benefits only for food multinationals that control 25% of the things we eat.
The accusation concerns the multiple forms of intensive agriculture spread across all EU countries which do not reconcile with the need for healthy diets. The new Europe that we hear talked about over and over again will have to pose the problem. Not underestimating, as Carlo Pertini of Slow Food reminds us, that agriculture causes 34% of CO2 emissions into the atmosphere. “The #CambiamoAgricoltura Coalition – concludes the invitation to MEPs – asks to put climate mitigation and biodiversity conservation at the center of future European agricultural policy and offers itself for a comparison to actively discuss it”. Who collects? The match has begun. Producers and consumers are waiting for the result.
