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CAA, AGEA and freelancers. The great hoax

October 12, 2024

The monopolistic reform of the agricultural assistance centers (CAA) – denounced several times on this site (1,2,3,4) – risks translating into a great mockery, by the minister Francesco Lollobrigida and AGEA (General Agency for Agricultural Payments), towards farmers and freelancers unjustly excluded from the related services. #VanghePulite.

1) AGEA, ‘agreement’ with three professional registers

AGEA, in the 9 October 2024 press release, declares to have signed an agreement with the representatives of the three professional registers:

– CNAAL, National College of Agricultural Technicians and Graduate Agricultural Technicians

– CNPAPAL, National College of Agricultural Experts and Graduate Agricultural Experts

– CONAF, Council of the National Order of Agronomists and Forestry Doctors. (5)

Such an agreement, according to AGEA:

– ‘will allow members of the three professional registers to provide assistance to users in processing applications for admission to community, national and regional benefits in agriculture’;

– would entail the withdrawal of the administrative appeals presented by the professional associations against the decree of the Ministry of Agriculture and the AGEA resolutions (6,7).

2) AGEA, what ‘concessions’ to freelancers?

‘The Convention’, reports AGEA, ‘provides for the definition of procedures aimed at facilitating the assignment of the control functions of which AGEA is the owner to professionals registered in the relevant registers’. The statement continues by reporting:

– the commitment of orders ‘to stimulate the continuous updating of skills to ensure the provision of adequate training and consultancy services to agricultural companies’;

– the goal ‘common to the four signatories’ from ‘support agricultural enterprises in the process of innovation and knowledge, for the purpose of improving production while respecting environmental sustainability’;

– ‘the establishment of a Permanent Technical Table for the planning and programming of the necessary support activities for AGEA’. (5)

3) The big joke

The AGEA press release, in fact, implies that the representatives of the aforementioned professional orders would be willing to:

– to renounce the protection of the sacrosanct right of over 2.500 freelance professionals to continue to provide farmers with company file management services for CAP contributions (6)

– in exchange for an agreement in which AGEA would allow freelancers to ‘provide assistance’ in processing applications, and would assign some of them to supervisory functions.

4) Consequences for freelancers

Freelancers, according to what can be understood from the cryptic press release of AGEA, would continue to suffer the serious prejudices introduced by the decree signed by Raffaele Borriello, former director of Coldiretti (3,4,8). That is to say, the impediment to access the applications in the National Agricultural Information System (SIAN) to enter and manage applications for CAP contributions and various other practices.

‘Nothing changes with respect to the ministerial decree 21.2.24 n. 83709, the AGEA application circular 29528 of 21/02/2024 and other provisions’, explains our friend and agricultural expert Valerio Steccanella. These acts include, among other things:

– company file held by the CAA;

– cultivation plan presented by the CAA;

– unified application, which includes all aid sectors, submitted by the CAAs;

– field notebooks inserted in the company file on SIAN managed by the CAA;

– certified agronomic reports, issuing of attestations and certifications managed by the CAA (e.g. professional agricultural entrepreneur, agronomic nitrate use plans, etc.), in the absence of any minimum qualification of their staff;

– prohibition for professionals to access the applications, unless they are CAA employees and renounce the professional activity connected to the practices submitted for the CAA.

5) Revolution!

‘All professionals registered with the College of Agricultural Experts and Graduate Agricultural Experts, or with the Order of Agronomy and Forestry Doctors to immediately send to their national and territorial colleges and orders a PEC email in which they request not to withdraw the appeals to the TAR presented against the Ministerial Decree of 21.2.24 n. 83709 on the reform of the CAA, if the Ministerial Decree is not first repealed.

If orders and colleges withdraw their appeals to the TAR when faced with such a situation, it means that they have no interest in the professional survival of a large part of their members, and in my opinion they no longer have any right to demand the payment of membership fees.

I renew then the invitation to make your voice heard immediately to avoid at least the formal approval by Orders and Colleges of the death sentence for professionals in the Italian agri-food sector’ (Agricultural expert Valerio Steccanella).

#VanghePulite

Dario Dongo

Footnotes

(1) Dario Dongo. AGEA and MASAF ‘Coldiretti’. The suppression of freelancers in agriculture. GIFT (Great Italian Food Trade).

(2) Dario Dongo. Italy, green light for the CAA monopoly on EU aid in agriculture. GIFT (Great Italian Food Trade).

(3) Dario Dongo. CAA reform, new costs and bureaucracy for farmers. GIFT (Great Italian Food Trade).

(4) Dario Dongo. #FarmersUnited, the manifesto 2 March 2024. GIFT (Great Italian Food Trade).

(5) AGEA. Agricultural assistance, agreement signed between AGEA and professionals in the agricultural sector. 9.10.24 https://t.ly/85VZc

(6) The professional orders have in fact appealed to the TAR Lazio to obtain the annulment of the ministerial decree 21.2.24 n. 83709 which has definitively excluded their members from the possibility of providing agricultural services outside the CAA (see notes 3,4)

(7) The professional orders had already appealed against the AGEA resolution 6.12.20 n. 25 which had first attempted to exclude them from access to the national agricultural information system. See previous articles:

– Tris of the Lazio TAR on the CAA. Freelancers admitted. GIFT (Great Italian Food Trade).

– CAA, the State Council rejects freelancers. #VanghePulite. GIFT (Great Italian Food Trade).

(8) Dario Dongo. Revolving doors in agriculture, a question. GIFT (Great Italian Food Trade).