Coltivaitalia: 1 billion plan for agriculture

One billion euros to Italian agriculture. This is what the Minister of Agriculture, Francesco Lollobrigida, will announce today when presenting the bill linked to the Financial Law. Named Coltivaitalia, the connected agricultural bill will spread the resources over three years, from 2026 to 2028. The plan identifies three priority pillars, to which it will distribute most of the resources in equal parts. One is the olive sector, the other is the production of cereals and vegetable proteins intended in particular for animal feed, and the third is the livestock sector.

At the ministry they claim that not since 1977 has so much money been put on agriculture. The announcement of this billion comes just a few days after the presentation of the proposal for the EU budget 2028-2034, in which the European Commission has hypothesised a cut in the resources allocated to the CAP from 386 to 300 billion euro. For Italy, that would be about 8 billion less over seven years. Which the government is now trying to compensate by offering an extra billion in national resources.

The support for olive growers had in some ways already been anticipated two days ago by the undersecretary for Agriculture, Patrizio La Pietra, during an initiative promoted by Aifo, the Italian Association of Olive Oil Millers. "The undersecretary recalled, 'The olive-growing system is one of the fundamental supply chains for us, together with that of wheat. Italy is an exporting country, we more or less export more than our national production and therefore, considering that we have a high domestic consumption, we are, in some ways, forced to import olive oil'. In order to increase national production, therefore, the government is ready to support the reconstitution of the entire national production capacity, and not only that part of the olive-growing system - like Puglia - that has been most affected by plant diseases in recent years.

The Food Sovereignty Fund set up in 2023, with an annual budget of 25 million euros, was already aimed at boosting the cultivation of plant proteins for feed production. Now, with the Coltivaitalia plan, the government aims to accelerate with support, first and foremost, for domestic soya production. The aim is to increasingly break away from the import of cereals and pulses for animal feed. Not least because a stronger national feed industry also serves to support a stronger livestock industry, and this is precisely the third pillar on which the government intends to bet. Italy still imports many of the cattle that are then bred and slaughtered in the country: the goal is to achieve ever greater independence in this area too, as the philosophy of food sovereignty requires.

Most of the billion that the Ministry of Agriculture - after lengthy negotiations with the Ministry of the Economy - is putting in place today will go to support supply chain contracts. But Lollobrigida's plan has another watchword, which is generational turnover. Coltivaitalia envisages ad hoc support for companies under 40, easier access to credit for young people and, above all, more than 8,000 hectares of land available from tomorrow on free loan for the next ten years. Overall, the value of the measures for young people exceeds 100 million euro.