Taking a return flight from Rome to any European capital is equivalent in terms of polluting emissions to the per capita consumption of meat and cured meats for an entire year, specified Luigi Scordamaglia representing Coldiretti and Filiera Italia at the forum on 'Agriculture and Green Deal' promoted in collaboration by ANSA and the European Parliament Office in Italy and with the participation of the MEPs Paolo De Castro (S&D-Pd), Francesca Peppucci (Ppe-Fi), Nicola Procaccini (Ecr-Fdi) and Isabella Tovaglieri (Id-Lega).
Moreover, highlighted Cristina Tinelli, director of European affairs at Confagricoltura, all European agriculture is responsible for just 1.38% of CO2 emissions on a global scale.
And Italian livestock farms, as well as the hectares of land cultivated by our farms, are small in scale compared to the average of foreign production companies, remarked Matteo Bartolini, national vice president of Cia-Italian Farmers.
In short, Italian farmers are not willing to take the stand as defendants in the green transition policies launched by the European Union in this legislature that is coming to an end, and they underline that without economic and social sustainability environmental sustainability cannot be achieved.
A relevant topic, given that a third of the European budget is spent on agriculture and the Green Deal is decided upon by the European Parliament by listening to the sectors, recalled Carlo Corazza, director of the European Parliament Office in Italy.
However, according to Francesca Peppucci (EPP-Fi), "in order for there to be a future for agriculture, EU measures that look at environmental sustainability must be well calibrated to be implemented".
While Nicola Procaccini (Ecr-Fdi) distances himself from the "eco-chic radicalism of the Nature Regulation which, with its constraints, has paradoxically created problems for those who live and work in nature, such as farmers, breeders and fishermen. A five-year legislature ends, and for four and a half years, few people said that the ecological transition had to be done with common sense".
"At the end of the legislature, and in light of the tractor protests in various member countries of the European Union - according to Isabella Tovaglieri (Id-Lega) - temporary suspensions arrive in a disorderly reverse, but not a substantial revision. I
would have expected more courage on the part of the Agriculture Commission in defense of food sovereignty but if policies that ask us to produce less continue, we ask for the principle of reciprocity for agri-food imports with our same quality standards".
For Paolo De Castro (S&D-Pd), "agriculture must be a more important protagonist after the objective difficulties in managing the ecological transition which has seen too much attributed to the Environment Commission without listening to the other substantive commissions, Agriculture but also Industry and Transport. But they must be highlighted the objectives achieved have increased, in the last 20 years, by 30% of the active ingredients of pesticides and of 14% of antibiotics".
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