Braga (land surveyors): 'CAP, a defeat if farmers choose not to ask for aid'

"The CAP is decided 30 per cent in Brussels and 70 per cent in the member states, which have a great deal of autonomy in applying the agricultural policy guidelines. Therefore, if the ecoschemes have turned out to be a failure, it is pointless to protest in Brussels because we in Italy devised those mechanisms. It is within national borders that we must look for the criticalities and - above all - the correctives'.

Mario Braga, president of the National College of Agricultural and Graduate Surveyors, has clear ideas about the difficulties experienced by Italian and European farmers over the past year, which culminated in the blatant demonstrations in the streets in recent months that, among other things, many believe could soon be repeated. Difficulties which, in Italy, have also led to another tangible effect, namely the veritable haemorrhage of applications for CAP aid over the past year: 50 thousand fewer applications, 10% of the total. All farmers who preferred to renounce EU contributions in order to avoid the production constraints imposed by Brussels.

"One of the first things to do,' adds Braga, 'is to greater involvement of professional technicians, both in the application and management of the CAP, whereas they have always kept us on the sidelines. Instead, we consider our technical-scientific contribution essential for the improvement, rationalisation, simplification, cost-effectiveness and modernisation of bureaucratic procedures and calls for tenders, which are the tools at the basis of the development of our agricultural enterprises. Orders and Colleges are unfortunately not considered intermediate bodies interlocutors of the public decision-maker'.

Yet signals of openness have come from Agea, especially in recent months with the new management and the new course.

"Agea has made openings? There are timid signs, we will see if a new course of modernisation and rationalisation of the CAP will really be set in motion. We as professionals are willing to work together with the representatives of the agricultural world to rethink a simplified and modern model for managing the European bureaucracy. The current model is largely inadequate and ends up burdening farmers with the costs of excessive bureaucracy. Would you like an example of a failure to simplify? Why are Agea and Ismea two separate bodies and not one? Agea, through its aid applications, holds up-to-date data on Italian agricultural enterprises and Ismea processes data. Why do they not work together?'.