here is the aggregated input on topic #4 - the future challenges for small farms.
Our future challenges for small farmers in Italy, might be different from those in other parts of the world:
- the presence of a great number of supermarkets that belongs to multinational businesses (and import food in large quantities from abroad - ED: which might even be grown locally)
- although our farmers are bound together and altogether can bring a big consolidated bid to sell our product; multinationals do not seem to notice our presence. (Indeed you can find some of our products, grown abroad, grown with a lot of chemicals, marketed
at a very low price)
- in the meantime our products market might grow as a produce of excellence, but it is still grown as a seasonal product, which we prefer not to sell in these multi-national stores.
- The price of the land is increasing
- the price to attend markets is really very high.
- politicians want to cut the strong family ties that bonds a farm family. The idea is that if your mother or son or uncle or cousin give you a hand in the farm, you have to hire them paying taxes and a salary and pension of 3.200 euro per year…..
Sandra Sumane's very importantly highlights in her response to Question 4.1 that there are “other stakeholders who have power to improve small producers’ market access” and that we should be careful not
to focus only on “cooperation among farmers” – although this is clearly an important factor.
I like the fact that Sandra specifically mentions the role of consumers, local municipalities and agricultural trainers / advisers as key stakeholders. As inspiration for Romania for increasing smallholder
inclusion in the rapidly developing new agri-food value chains here in Romania, we have looked at a number of initiatives from other parts of Europe that aim to INTEGRATE the involvement of these different stakeholders. These initiatives include:
There a lots of ideas and many good examples available!