Farmers and agricultural assistance centers (AACs) in Italy continue to face obstacles and problems in accessing Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) subsidies with AGEA, the national paying agency. #VanghePulite
1. CAP grant disbursement, 2024 campaign
The management of CAP dossiers in the 2024 campaign has been difficult and dramatic, as seen with the introduction of the new Graphical Crop Plan (GCP), the National Soil Map (NSM) and the new Unified Application. To the point that the final deadline for their submission has even been extended to September 24, 2024.
The problems continue, with intolerable financial exposure for some farms whose files are still being processed. Thus, the economic damages related to the 2023/2024 agricultural year, already disastrous from a production point of view due to a drought never seen so intense that has affected the entire South-Central region, are worsening.
2. CAP subsidies disbursement in Italy, the problems with AGEA
The dysfunctions in the management of dossiers for CAP subsidies in Italy, to date unresolved by AGEA, are described by some CAA operators in the following terms, with some examples.
2.1. Slowed and split payments
CAP contributions are being disbursed with serious delays and incomprehensible splits. According to our sources, some farms have received up to seven different bank transfers for their application for direct payments alone, without yet reaching the final balance to which they are entitled.
We give the concrete example of a small farm that received a total of € 3,788.01, split as follows:
- 801.22 euros on 21.10.24
- 1,716.23 euros on 10/31/24
- 23.78 euros on 18.11.24
- 120.38 euros on 20.11.24
- 927.12 euros on 19.12.24
- 179.79 euros the same 19.12.24
- 19.49 euros on 6.2.25.
2.2. Generalized reductions
Protein crop and eco-scheme 4 payment outcomes have experienced significant generalized reductions, according to our sources.
These reductions are often unjustified, and are in fact belied in satellite monitoring summaries that confirm regularity and eligibility of claims.
2.3. Suspension of direct payments
Numerous applications for direct payments with amounts ‘in control’ since November-December have not received feedback to date. One example out of all, a producer who was fully payable in November 2024 for 54,228.04 euros has not received a single euro as of early March 2025.
2.4. Traditional Local Practices
Many applications have been severely or completely penalized due to Traditional Local Practices (TLPs) generated to comply with the National Soil Map (CNDS).
Areas that had always been evaluated and declared as 50% arboreal pasture were upgraded to forest and thus excluded from payments, due to the prohibition of PLT increase in 2024 compared to previous years.
Extensive livestock farms in inland and mountainous areas, precisely those that really ensure the protection of fragile and marginal territories, are the most affected.
2.5. Civic Uses
The vast majority of applications on Civic Use areas – with shared and therefore multi-declared parcels – have not been paid, although all established procedures were followed when compiling the Graphical Cultivation Plan (GCP).
2.6 Area Monitoring System (AMS)
Monitoring by satellite (Area Monitoring Systems, AMS), applied for the first time this year also to the Rural Development Plan (RDP), has generated an immense amount of traffic lights and red flags.
Agricultural assistance centers (AACs) thus find themselves having to rework the paperwork, after convening the farms who are responsible for deciding whether to accept or challenge the outcomes proposed by the system. With additional time and costs.
Satellite monitoring has shown glaring blunders, among others, in rejecting applications. Some examples:
– large areas of olive groves with regular multi-decade or even century-old plantings assessed as forest, or even as arable land
– uniform arable plots cut in two and assessed as compliant for only one part, albeit identical to that instead assessed as non-compliant.
2.7 Dysfunctional ‘vanguard’
The national paying agency AGEA (General Agency for Agricultural Disbursements) boasts as ‘vanguard’, in Italy, the coexistence of two automatic soil assessment systems:
– National Soil Map (NSM), and
– Area Monitoring System (AMS).
The two systems nonetheless, according to the information gathered, provide conflicting results in many cases. Thus, claims from Graphical Crop Plan (PCG) are rejected, although the AMS system approves farm claims on identical plots.
2.8. Graphical Cultivation Plan (PCG) update defects
The applications for the 2025 Graphical Cultivation Plan (PCG) in turn encounter additional problems. When even the applications submitted in 2024 have been accepted:
– land use updates do not appear to have been implemented in the National Soil Map (CNDS)
– AACs are thus forced to reiterate in 2025 the same applications already accepted in 2024.
2.9. Exclusion of RDP applications for intervention on organic farming
60-80% of RDP applications for SRA29 intervention (action SRA29.1, Conversion to organic farming; action SRA29.2, Maintenance of organic farming) on organic farms result at present in total exclusion from payment, depending on the region, due to the ‘X7’ anomaly.
This anomaly generally emerges on very small parcels of land, since in notification they are present only in the cadastral section buildings, while in application risible areas emerge (even less than 100 sq. m.) surveyed in the Graphical Cultivation Plan (PCG) 2024 but not even in the previous one, based precisely on the Cadastre.
The hoax lies in the fact that the ‘X7’ anomaly is generated by inconsistencies on individual cadastral parcels, after AGEA reportedly reported during the 2024 campaign that the Land Registry no longer had any relevance as everything was to be based on graphic surveys and objective uses.
2.10. Organic notifications
The compilation of organic notifications is often in turn arduous, if not impossible, to the serious detriment of farms that have to submit them because of changes in the areas conducted. This problem is even more pressing since meanwhile AGEA is working on the migration of the application, from the alphanumeric system to the graphic one. And the Control Bodies already fear the serious complications.
3. Provisional conclusions
The evolution towards new graphical technologies is in itself useful and appreciable, but the contextual implementation of a series of tools and applications that have not been specially tested in their incremental complexity has generated and is still causing the serious problems mentioned above, with serious damage to farms.
The political and administrative responsibilities for this havoc remain to be clarified, not to mention the roles of the IT service contractors to whom some of AGEA’s dysfunction is attributed and their interests with the power system and the Coldiretti magic circle, to which reference has already been made.
Italian farmers, meanwhile, continue to suffer abominable damage. #VanghePulite
Dario Dongo
Dario Dongo, lawyer and journalist, PhD in international food law, founder of WIISE (FARE - GIFT - Food Times) and Égalité.
