New CAP Provides Plenty of Opportunities for Italian Olive Growers

The impacts of the new Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) agreed by the European Union mem­ber states last week will soon be felt across the Italian agri­cul­tural sec­tor.

Among the pri­mary bene­fac­tors of the new pol­icy will be the olive oil sec­tor, espe­cially pro­duc­ers of oils cer­ti­fied with Protected Designation of Origin (PDO) or Protected Geographical Indication (PGI) sta­tus.

The sub­si­dies des­tined to the Italian agri­cul­tural sec­tor with the addi­tion of national funds will reach €34 bil­lion from 2023 to 2027 (€50 bil­lion, includ­ing the two-year stop­gap fund­ing from 2021 to 2023), with 25 per­cent of all direct pay­ments to farm­ers con­nected explic­itly to envi­ron­men­tally friendly prac­tices.

According to the Italian Minister of Agriculture, Food and Forestry, Stefano Patuanelli, the new CAP will sim­plify access to com­pen­sa­tions due to cli­mate change and extreme weather events, which have sig­nif­i­cantly affected Italian olive farm­ers in recent years.

Three per­cent of the total direct sub­si­dies and rural funds will be devoted to risk man­age­ment and restora­tion. The new CAP will also leg­is­late pro­ce­dures to dis­trib­ute funds more quickly than in the past.

“The new CAP rep­re­sents a huge oppor­tu­nity for our farm­ers because they will finally be able to plan their invest­ments,” Francesco Battistoni, the Italian Undersecretary of Agriculture, Food and Forestry, told Olive Oil Times.

He added that the new CAP inher­ently tar­gets the nature and struc­ture of the olive oil indus­try in Italy. The new agree­ment aims to pro­mote younger gen­er­a­tions of farm­ers, with spe­cific funds pro­vided to sup­port their activ­i­ties.

“Three per­cent of funds ded­i­cated to direct pay­ments will have to be des­tined to the young farm­ers to facil­i­tate gen­er­a­tional turnover,” Battistoni said.

Although many gov­ern­men­tal ini­tia­tives cur­rently focus on young Italian agri­cul­tur­al­ists, farm­ers under the age of 40 are rare in the coun­try. According to a recent report pub­lished by Ismea on the Italian olive oil sec­tor, there are 11 farm­ers aged 65 or older for every young farmer.

“Support for young farm­ers… could cover income sup­port, invest­ment or start-up aid,” the European Commission said as it announced the rat­i­fi­ca­tion of the CAP polit­i­cal agree­ment last month.

The new agree­ment will allow the orga­ni­za­tions in charge of PGI and PDO pro­duc­tion and dis­tri­b­u­tion to for­mu­late rec­om­men­da­tions on prices, extend­ing their cur­rent abil­i­ties to do so under the com­mon orga­ni­za­tion of the mar­kets, which is meant to help sta­bi­lize prices in each agri­cul­tural sec­tor. It will also pro­vide emer­gency com­pen­sa­tion for these pro­duc­ers.

Battistoni said that this mea­sure ensures ​“all PDO and PGI prod­ucts can be pro­grammed to bet­ter fit into the grow­ing market’s volatil­ity,” which is sig­nif­i­cant since Italy has more PDO and PGI-pro­tected olive oil-pro­duc­ing regions than any other European coun­try.

The new CAP, which the mem­ber states’ gov­ern­ments will have to trans­late into national strate­gic plans, also aims at offer­ing a pro­tec­tion umbrella for small farm­ing oper­a­tions.

While the most sig­nif­i­cant share of the national sub­si­dies will still be des­tined to the large com­pa­nies, the national plans will have to guar­an­tee that 10 per­cent of all avail­able sub­si­dies be dis­trib­uted to small agri-busi­nesses.

The agree­ment asks national gov­ern­ments to spec­ify in their strate­gic plan how they will accom­plish this task, which will be a sig­nif­i­cant pro­vi­sion for many Italian olive grow­ers, given that the vast major­ity of them oper­ate as small busi­nesses.

With a par­tic­u­lar focus on a reduced envi­ron­men­tal impact of the agri­cul­tural oper­a­tions and the con­ser­va­tion of bio­di­ver­sity, the new CAP requires those who will ask for pub­lic sup­port to devote at least three per­cent of their fields to bio­di­ver­sity con­ser­va­tion.

No pro­duc­tive crop will be grown in those areas, a pro­vi­sion that works well for tra­di­tional olive grow­ers, which rep­re­sent a large part of Italian grow­ers. Any activ­ity aimed at pre­serv­ing car­bon-rich soil by pro­tect­ing bogs and peat bogs will meet the new CAP require­ments.

This mea­sure will also inter­est olive farm­ers try­ing to repli­cate the encour­ag­ing results of the Spanish Olivares Vivos project, which focused specif­i­cally on restor­ing bio­di­ver­sity in olive groves.

Along with envi­ron­men­tal pro­tec­tions, Battistoni said that the CAP also focuses on social issues.

“The CAP’s turn­ing point has a social nature: sub­si­dies will be dis­trib­uted with spe­cific atten­tion to the respect of work­ers’ rights,” he said. ​“Those who will not fol­low the rules will incur heavy fines. This social para­me­ter is an inno­v­a­tive and rel­e­vant game-changer.”

Under the new rules, farm­ers will have to adhere to the E.U. labor and social reg­u­la­tions to receive pub­lic sup­port.

Paolo De Castro, an Italian Member of the European Parliament’s Agricultural Commission, added that ​“from now on the CAP will not fund farm­ers who do not respect their work­ers’ rights, putting an end to their unfair com­pe­ti­tion against the large major­ity of entre­pre­neurs who fully respect those rights.”

The Italian gov­ern­ment and the other European Union coun­tries will have to present their national strate­gic plan about the CAP by the end of 2021.

In the fol­low­ing six months, the European Commission will exam­ine the plans, which will come into force start­ing in January 2023. Until then, tem­po­rary pro­vi­sions are set to guar­an­tee cur­rent devel­op­ment plans along with emer­gency and restora­tion funds.

“More could have been done [in the E.U. debate on the CAP], espe­cially for the sim­pli­fi­ca­tion of admin­is­tra­tion, but we could have ended up with less as well,” Battistoni said.

“The plans we are going to out­line together with the stake­hold­ers [local gov­ern­ments, oper­a­tors, farm­ers and so on] will have a cru­cial role to play to put the oppor­tu­ni­ties of the new agree­ments to the best pos­si­ble use,” he con­cluded.

• Italian Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Forestry
• Padova News
• Giovani Impresa Coldiretti