The recent publication of the results of a call for funding for food and wine promotion activities in Lazio offers some clues on the role of Coldiretti in regional agri-food policies, as well as in national and European ones. (1)
1) ARSIAL, summer funding
ARSIAL, the Regional Agency for Agricultural Development and Innovation of Lazio, published the rankings on 7 August 2024, for a funding call related to projects promoting food and wine tourism. (2)
Rain aid, in a period of drought, for a total amount of 2 million euros, distributed as follows:
– to Municipalities and pro-loco, 100 projects financed for amounts from 1.000 to 20.000 euros
– to private individuals, 79 projects financed with amounts ranging between 1.000 and 14.500 euros (3)
– another 131 private projects, on the other hand, were admitted but not financed. (4)
1.1) Coldiretti wins, the co-ops lose
Coldiretti won hands down in the tender in question, obtaining financing for its five projects, positioned in the first 14 places out of the 79 financed projects.
The cooperatives registered with LegaCoop and Confcooperative, on the other hand – for the first time in 40 years, according to some long-time experts – they have seen all their projects admitted but not financed.
1.2) Defeated farmers
The real losers were the farmers and PO’s (producer organisations), who were allocated a paltry 16,5% of the total funding intended for private individuals (see Figure 1).
Among the excluded projects from the financing, we can observe 39 presented by cooperatives, consortia, bio-districts and other single and associated agricultural entities, for 361.377 euros of requests for contributions.
It is appropriate therefore to extend the analysis to the context in which ARSIAL operates, which has effectively become the operational arm of the Agriculture Department of the Lazio Region.
2) Lazio Region, Francesco Rocca’s council
The Regional Council of the Lazio Region, under the leadership of Francesco Rocca, will be remembered for the assignment of two fundamental delegations – budget and agriculture – to a single subject. Giancarlo Righini from Velletri, a regional councillor since 2013, is the super councillor of the second region of Italy.
The career of Giancarlo Righini among other things recorded a non-trivial ‘accident along the way’ in his first-degree sentence of four years’ imprisonment with disqualification from holding public office for auction-rigging in 2013, which was annulled three years later due to the statute of limitations. (5)
3) The councillor ‘dei Castelli’
The super councillor, according to some rumours, it would be little suited to dialogue with the leaders and with the regional territory, since its range of action would be mostly limited to the area of the Province of Rome and the Castelli Romani, which would correspond to its electoral catchment area.
Critical voices note how the councillor Giancarlo Righini has never been seen, with rare exceptions, in the provinces of:
– Latina, is one of the most important Italian agricultural provinces thanks to fruit and vegetables, floriculture, greenhouse crops and dairy farms. Nor do we remember any intervention by him after yet another tragedy linked to gangmastering
– Rieti, where farmers and families are still struggling with bureaucracy to restore the damage caused by the Amatrice earthquake on August 24, 2016
– Frosinone and Viterbo.
4) The ‘wine’ councillor
The commissioner Giancarlo Righini instead prefers all events on wine where he never misses an opportunity to claim the paternity of the law on wine and oil tourism. (6) Upon closer inspection, a regional law on the Wine and Oil Routes has already existed since 2001, even if it has produced meager results. (7)
Wine is therefore the protagonist of financing for the promotion of the agri-food sector in Lazio, to the detriment of other supply chains. As shown by the deviations from the program of agri-food trade fairs in which the Lazio Region, with its partner ARSIAL, had committed to participate in 2024:
– the program envisaged accompanying the companies in the sector to 16 events, 3 of which in the wine sector, 3 in the fruit and vegetable sector, 5 in the general agri-food sector, and one for each of the organic, fisheries, olive oil, horticultural and rural tourism sectors, with a total budget of 2 million euros. (8) Unless:
– three more ‘unscheduled’ events have been added to the three scheduled wine events (Slow Wine Fair, Prowein, Vinitaly). Amphora Revolution, Vinoforum and lastly Vinitaly USA next October in Chicago (9)
– the Lazio Region did not participate in prominent international fairs such as Fruit Logistica and Biofach in Germany, Alimentaria in Spain, Mac Fruit in Rimini and Summer Fancy Food in New York, which had also been approved by the Council.
4.1) Spending sprees at Vinitaly?
The restyling of the Lazio pavilion at Vinitaly, according to rumours, it would have cost several hundred thousand euros. In addition to the expenses already faced in previous years, which would have well exceeded one million euros.
A political catwalk with exclusive photographic services, communication campaigns entrusted to external companies, gala dinners, trips and missions. Without sparing any expense. All entrusted to the management of ARSIAL, which with the advent of the Rocca-Righini council regained its share and resources.
5) Lazio Region and ARSIAL, what funding planning?
Lazio region allocated to ARSIAL, in 2023:
– in addition to resources for trade fair events
– another 3,750 million euros for the ‘rainfall aid’.
Financing without strategic planning, heavy aid intended for the disorderly promotion of Lazio’s agri-food products in favour of Municipalities, other public bodies and private associations.
5.1) The tenders
The debut of the Rocca-Righini council recorded two first calls for rainfall aid, in the summer and winter of 2023 (10,11). The generous donations continued with the two tenders published in June 2024 mentioned in the previous paragraph 1, for a total of 2 million euros (12,13).
The doubts, note well, they are not linked to the numbers but to the ratio and the methods of allocating funding, with criteria so vague as to leave wide discretion in the evaluation.
Instead of evaluating which supply chains require greater support to establish themselves on the markets and recover profitability, the Lazio Region and ARSIAL disperse the funding in hundreds of local initiatives and festivals, of dubious effectiveness for the actual valorisation of the agri-food sector.
6) Rainfall aid, what are the benefits for supply chains?
The big question, in the face of these millionaire investments in promotion, is whether the territory and the operators of the agri-food sector in Lazio have derived any concrete benefit from them, beyond the trips and the impromptu folklore.
Market shares, exports, farmers’ remuneration, employment, and added value. Has anything changed as a result of any of the projects? Councilor Giancarlo Righini and ARSIAL Extraordinary Commissioner Massimiliano Raffa do not appear to have taken care to verify the effects of regional policies, due to the lack of information on the matter.
The ‘promotion’ rather, it appears to be a ‘reservoir’ of resources from the regional budget which politicians can draw on at will – even ‘out of programme’, as we have seen (paragraph 4) – without having to submit to the rigorous criteria instead envisaged for the management of European funds.
7) Fresh milk from Lazio, the great bluff
Exemplary is the ‘Fresh milk from Lazio, choose well, drink good’ campaign, aimed at promoting the consumption of fresh regional milk. The Rocca-Righini council took this initiative away from Lazio Innova, a company en casa which had already been entrusted by the previous administration, to entrust it to ARSIAL.
The ‘Fresco Lazio’ tender predicts a non-repayable contribution for bars, restaurants, hotels, ice cream parlours, catering, supermarkets and hypermarkets, for a total of 21 Ateco codes involved, as a reimbursement equal to 50% of the expenditure made for the purchase of fresh bovine milk from Lazio’, with a financial endowment of 3 million euros. (14)
Lazio breeders are afflicted by below-cost sales – that is, they are forced to sell milk below production costs – and the Righini-Raffa duo gives away three million euros to an infinite number of public businesses and distributors, without even influencing the extraordinary promotion to contractual supply commitments. Whose prodest?
8) Politics, and Coldiretti
The partnership between Coldiretti and Minister Francesco Lollobrigida is deeply rooted in its Region, which is administered by a particularly supportive regional council. The yellow flags are, after all, very efficient in celebrating the politicians of the moment, with their prodigious means of communication.
Suffice it to recall the event organised by Coldiretti on July 12, 2024, in front of the headquarters of the Lazio Region, to celebrate Councilor Righini and President Rocca who took to the streets to announce the reform of the regional plan of urgent interventions for the management of wild boars.
Yellow flags, banners and hats, radio and TV. And farmers, ranchers and citizens continue to pay.
#VanghePulite
Dario Dongo
Footnotes
(1) Dario Dongo. PNRR and tender on supply chain contracts, Coldiretti ‘ace take it all’. #Clean spades. GIFT (Great Italian Food Trade).
(2) Arsial Regional Funds, promotion project rankings online. Press release. 7.8.24 https://tinyurl.com/yy5rwu5s
(3) ARSIAL, final rankings for private individuals. Projects admitted and financed https://tinyurl.com/388uvnjn
(4) ARSIAL, final rankings for private individuals. Projects admitted and not financed https://tinyurl.com/4n2du9yu
(5) Brothers of Italy, Lazio regional councilor convicted: “He rigged the tenders”. The Daily Fact. 26.3.13 https://www.ilfattoquotidiano.it/2013/03/26/lazio-condannato-a-4-anni-consigliere-regionale-fratelli-ditalia-trucco-appalti/542410/
(6) Regional law 27.10.23 n. 14. Regulation of wine tourism and oil tourism activities https://tinyurl.com/yc3aejss
(7) Regional Law 21/2001. Regulation of the routes of wine, oil and typical agri-food and artisanal products https://tinyurl.com/6jfpcuy7
(8) Lazio Region Council, resolution 26.10.23 n. 678. ‘LR n. 2/2003, art. 83. Promotion and valorisation of agricultural products. Approval of the program of initiatives to promote agricultural and agri-food products in which the Lazio Region intends to participate in 2024’
(9) ARSIAL. Vinitaly USA, expressions of interest are now underway. 4.7.24 https://tinyurl.com/2b53wyn8
(10) ARSIAL, Extraordinary Commissioner. Resolution 12.7.23 n. 34 https://www.arsial.it/avvisi/154
(11) ARSIAL, Extraordinary Commissioner. Resolution 30.11.23 n. 81 https://www.arsial.it/avvisi/162
(12) ARSIAL. Resolution of the Extraordinary Commissioner 14.6.24 n. 69
https://www.arsial.it/avvisi/185
(13) ARSIAL. Resolution of the Extraordinary Commissioner 14.6.24 n. 70 https://tinyurl.com/287ncb8x
(14) Agriculture Director Determination 10.6.24 n. G07608. ‘Implementation of DGR 29.01.24 n.47. Approval of the ‘FRESCO LAZIO’ tender – Measures to support catering, processing and food trade activities that use and/or supply fresh milk from Lazio’ https://www.regione.lazio.it/agricoltura/bando-fresco-lazio
Dario Dongo, lawyer and journalist, PhD in international food law, founder of WIISE (FARE - GIFT - Food Times) and Égalité.
