In Corsica, aid coupled with beef production has suffered a significant reduction for 2024, causing serious concern among breeders. An information meeting took place this Tuesday, May 21 in Vescovato, in the premises of the Haute-Corse Chamber of Agriculture. Its president, Joseph Colombani, notably expressed his dissatisfaction with the drop of one million euros out of the three million planned. “This is perhaps the final blow to an entire sector. A sector so much criticized which places a lot of hope in a finally concrete territorial policy to be able to produce without this posing additional problems such as wandering”he explains. “There is a plan, it must be implemented, with official signs of quality, slaughterhouses worthy of the name, a processing center for the manufacture of food in order to have reasonable costs. And we must start by stopping, at the level of state services, from negatively discriminating against us. By imposing the bolus on us, by having aid amounts lower than what exists everywhere in France, it is discrimination, nothing more and nothing less. ! We have to be serious, we have to sit around a table and ask for a real process which is also part of the Beauvau framework and the revival of the Corsican economy; it’s not just the institutional and statuary side. And then if not, if you can’t do it, you might have to wear shorts and flowered shirts and show off like in Kanaky“, launches the president of the chamber, also president of the Departmental Federation of Farmers’ Unions (FDSEA) of Haute-Corse.
Cash flow heavily impacted
For Jean-Baptiste Cantini, head of the animal production and identification department of the consular establishment, the direct consequences of this drop on farms promise to be significant. “According to the decree of April 26, 2024, the amount allocated per head of cattle is 99 euros in Corsica, compared to 106 euros on the continent. It was 177 euros during the previous programming“, he adds. “This disparity is exacerbated by the particularities of island breeding, in particular reproduction in summer pastures which makes it difficult to precisely identify the fathers of the calves. The situation leads to a further reduction in aid, with a reduced rate of 55 euros for calves whose father is unknown, thus affecting 70% of the herd.continues the technician according to whom “the decline will have a very strong impact on the cash flow of farms to the point of endangering their sustainability“.
Roland Frias
“Negative discrimination”
Toussaint Fazi, breeder and president of the association for the defense and promotion of Corsican veal, highlights the immediate difficulties for operators. “People had budgeted for a certain amount of aid and today, these are the people who will receive between 30 and 50% less than those they expected from their 2023 declarations. People will have difficulty stocking up on hay and feed for the coming winter.“.
With 30,000 heads of cattle distributed between 600 breeders in Haute-Corse and nearly 450 in Corse-du-Sud, the impact of the reduction in aid is not only economic but also structural for an entire sector. Faced with what they consider to be “negative discrimination”, breeders have requested from state services a revaluation of aid and a reassessment of the award criteria taking into account the particularities of island breeding. Responses from the DRAAF (Regional Directorate of Food, Agriculture and Forestry) are expected by the end of the week; Corsican breeders have not ruled out resorting to union action if their requests remain unanswered.
