"To deal with the grasshopper emergency we need an extraordinary commissioner, with a broad political mandate, who has inter-executive powers and a good knowledge of the subject".
This is the request arrived from the farmers of central Sardinia through the voice of the president of Confagricoltura Nuoro-Ogliastra, Michele Ena , during a conference organized in Ottana by the association in collaboration with the municipal administration to address the theme of the invasion of locusts. which in the last four years has devastated crops on several occasions, causing enormous damage.
"For the 2023 season in the fight against the invasion of locusts - explains Confagricoltura (which also listed the contrast measures ) - we are now out of time with the plowing of the land, which had to be done between the end of August and Autumn. A series of operations that were dismissed last August 11 with a ministerial decree of the Mipaaf and which after almost 90 days remained only on the paper of the Action, contrast and containment plan ”.
“There is too much to do and for next season we risk having tens of billions of grasshoppers in hundreds of thousands of hectares of Sardinia. Something vastly more terrifying than what we have seen this year, ”added Ena.
And again, continues the president, "our associates are not only interested in refreshments which, if and when they arrive, never cover the real losses, but they want at their side the efficiency of a Region that works on prevention and which instead risks always arriving too late and a phenomenon that can no longer be contained. Do we want to protect farmers and the communities that populate inland areas or do we continue to protect grasshoppers? Up to now it seems to me that we have guaranteed the survival of the latter ”.
In solidarity with the farmers, the mayor of Ottana Franco Saba : “We have arrived in November, the period of plowing of the land, and therefore of the mechanical intervention against oviposition is substantially over. It is therefore necessary to raise awareness and urge the Region to make and disseminate the prevention program through pest control among agricultural entrepreneurs, so as to be able to see as soon as possible how they want to operate in terms of timing, available means, financial endowment and what else is needed. in order to stem the invasion ".
THE CIA - The CIA - Italian Confederation of Farmers, too, takes a position on the grasshopper problem, urging the governor Christian Solinas and the councilor for Agriculture, Gabriella Murgia, to convene as soon as possible the institutional discussion tables for the implementation of the "Plan of 'action to combat and contain acridic infestations in Sardinia ”, presented last September 22nd at the meeting of the newly created territorial unit for the phytosanitary emergency due to acridic infestations.
"It seems clear and obvious, after more than a month from the presentation of the Plan, that without a detailed scheduling of all the planned interventions and in the absence of a timely involvement of all the subjects involved, above all breeders and farmers, what is indicated on the paper will not produce no effect and with the new season we will find ourselves facing an invasion of grasshoppers with dramatic and destructive consequences for the territories involved and for the entire economic structure of Sardinia ", write the president of Cia Sardegna, Francesco Erbì and the director, Alessandro Vacca.
(Unioneonline / lf)
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The conference in Ottana (Video G.Locci):