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Press Release no.16
Agriculture. The food deficit, the primary sector increasingly more at the
center of the global economy
We are entering an era of food shortages. World demand for food is greater than
what the world can produce. This is the picture painted by the chairman of the
European Parliamentary Agriculture Commission, Paolo De Castro, speaking
today at EIMA International. The commission chairman emphasized that
agricultural production has become an issue of extraordinary importance for the
markets, as shown by the further increase in commodity prices recently to reach
alarm levels. “The world is changing and all this is creating market dynamics but
also very strong political worries about what the capacity of the planet will be
for satisfying this growing demand,” De Castro said.
In the context in which productivity becomes a fundamental factor for improving
agricultural yields, the agricultural mechanization sector is thus called on to play
a leading role. For the Italian companies, which demonstrate great vitality and an
enormous capacity for adapting their production to meet foreign demand, the
scenario is chiaroscuro. Exports are growing but the domestic market is still at
the starting gate. As De Castro pointed out, though 75% of the tractors in Italy
have been on the job for more than 25 years, the country’s machinery inventory
is finding no margin for investments. The commission chairman noted that in
France and Germany incomes are gaining whereas they are falling in Italy. Even
in years when the prices of farm products increase no gains are reported for
agricultural income. This is a snapshot of the inefficient organization of the
Italian system.
In this connection, the measures written into the Rural Development Plans for
agricultural mechanization provide important support for the primary sector.
However, as underscored by FederUnacoma and ENAMA, more than a few
difficulties carrying the risk of the disengagement of these funds are reported.
This disengagement mechanism is expected to be definitively changed in the
new Regional Development Plans for 2014-2020. De Castro said, “The
European Union has already introduced a norm which radically modifies the
matter of disengagement in the member states which opt for the RDP at the
regional level; in the future plans there will be no regional disengagement.
Unspent funds will not be returned to Brussels but go to Rome.” In other words,
unutilized funds will be redistributed to the most virtuous regions as awards for
the best practices of the more efficient administrations.
Bologna, November 9, 2012