In the last thirty years, Italian farms have reduced their emissions by 24% in contrast to the increase observed worldwide (+16%). And while our country in the period 1990-2020 lowered its emissions by about a quarter, Brazil increased them by 44%, Morocco and Turkey by 23%, India by 21%, Tunisia by 18%, China by 8%. , Ireland by 6% and the USA by 3%. This is the analysis, based on data from the Divulga study centre, by Coldiretti which unites and calls institutions and operators to a new battle in the EU after the compromise agreement on the text of the new directive for the reduction of industrial emissions, including for the first turn the farms, even those of small and medium size.
Thresholds for cattle are “unacceptable” for Italy
Agreement that received the go-ahead from the Council of EU Environment Ministers on March 16 but without Italy’s consent. In this sense, Coldiretti thanks the Minister of the Environment and Energy Security Gilberto Pichetto Fratin according to which the thresholds for cattle are “unacceptable” for Italy. Position shared by the Minister of Agriculture and Food Sovereignty, Francesco Lollobrigida who had underlined how such initiatives based on “ideological choices risk leading to increases in breeding and consumption costs to the advantage of competition from non-EU countries”, and the desertification of a primary production sector in the EU.
Coldiretti against the EU directive
Therefore, even after this first green light, it is necessary “to continue the battle to stop the European directive that kills stables which equates farms to factories, pushing them to close”, says the president of Coldiretti Ettore Prandini. Legislation “unsustainable and unjustifiable if we look at the emissions data – says Prandini – which will now have to be discussed in the European Parliament where the request to maintain the status quo signed by the main EU agricultural organizations on the initiative of Coldiretti, from Belgium (Fwa) to Czech Republic (Akcr and Zscr), from Germany (Dbv) to France (Fnsea), from Poland (Fbzpr) to Portugal (Cap) from Slovakia (Sppk) to Spain (Asaja)».
Reduction of climate-changing emissions also in France and Germany
The European Union’s approach, continues Coldiretti, “is based on inaccurate and old data, and risks causing negative impacts”. Situation that affects everyone, not just our country. The positive turnaround on the reduction of climate-altering emissions, again according to the Divulga study center, in fact affects not only Italy but also the main producing countries of the European Union such as France, which has cut its CO2 equivalent emissions by 20%, the measure which expresses uniformly the impact on the climate of the various greenhouse gases, and Germany which has reduced them by 40%.
New front after the alarms on the Nutriscone label
«After the terrorist alarms on the bottles of wine and the Nutriscore label which rejects the natural foods of the Mediterranean diet – notes Coldiretti – this new front opens up. A proposal contested by farmers in Italy and in Europe where the protest is spreading, as demonstrated by the recent results of the provincial elections in Holland. Here the emerging party on the Dutch political scene, the Boer Burger Beweging, a civic movement of peasants, soared to 19% by removing the consent of Prime Minister Mark Rutte, held responsible – Coldiretti again underlines – for the transposition of the EU regulations on emissions that cause the decimation of farms”.