Agricultural growth is held in a vice. On the one hand, environmentalists who attack chemistry, genetics and farming. On the other Coldiretti which advocates niche agriculture aimed at the production of typical products. Convenient position as it allows her to erect walls against anything that could attack her power. Agricultural industrialization, non-traditional production, extensive production first and foremost, but also gmo’s, cultivated meat and free trade agreements. The two lobbies find their meeting point in biotech, with Coldiretti for years advocating positions close to those of Greenpeace except granting timid openings to genome editing techniques. However, the views regarding protectionism are different, with Coldiretti an avid supporter of border barriers. The most recent outcry in this sense against the trade agreement signed by Brussels with the countries belonging to Mercosur, the common market of the South American states. The fear is always the same, that of seeing foreign products arriving in Italy that could compete with the national ones. It may be, given that the agreement involves over 700 million people, required twenty years of exhausting negotiations before reaching signature and now creates the largest free trade area in the world, but competition is known to be one stimulus to the market, as demonstrated by the other agreement which Coldiretti opposed without results, the Ceta, a free trade pact between the EU and Canada signed in 2017. Even then the union screamed about the destruction of the Italian economy and supported the national protectionists, but made a terrible impression.
With the entry into force of Ceta, European exports to Canada increased by over 60 percent, giving rise to an estimated 12 percent increase in jobs in the sectors for which the agreement applies. Then as today only a “pro domo proprio” stance, therefore, an interested protectionism which was then accompanied by the aforementioned and equally interested “no” to cultivated meat, derogatorily branded as “synthetic” even if it is not such. An issue which, however, has seen Coldiretti clash with Greenpeace which instead pushes these new food frontiers seeing in them a potential key to closing down intensive farming, a thesis also supported with advanced and effective communication techniques, so much so as to influence the media and politics. A capacity that trade unions do not have. They try to answer in kind, but they flounder without articulating theses other than the usual precautionary principle or stale fears for employment.
It is certainly difficult to respond to a lobby that the collective imagination assumes to be devoid of commercial interests, when one is seen as a partisan lobby, but for this very reason, communication should be at the center of the union’s attention, choosing the right channels, the more qualified partners and the most effective arguments. It’s expensive, as we know, but it’s always better than responding clumsily to the attacks of those who instead enjoy maximum visibility and, unfortunately, undeserved credibility. Certainly, Ettore Prandini, President of Coldiretti, did not achieve his objective in his recent response to Greenpeace on the environmental impacts of livestock farming, relying on scientific explanations outside his scope regarding emissions from the livestock sector. In fact, between a limping response and dignified silence, the latter is always preferable. It is true that preventing Coldiretti from engaging in nonsense is like trying to empty the sea with a glass.
Titolo: Neither Coldiretti nor Greenpeace
Translation with Google
