Milan: Coldiretti Farmers Protest Against Bureaucracy and Unfair Practices
Milan, March 10, 2026 – Farmers and breeders from Coldiretti Lombardy convened this morning in Piazza Duca d’Aosta, beneath the Pirellone skyscraper, to voice their concerns about the escalating challenges facing Lombard agriculture. The protest, driven by unresolved issues and new threats, including the ongoing conflict in the Middle East, calls for urgent action from institutions.
A Call for True Debureaucratization
Giovanni Martinelli, a breeder and vice-president of Coldiretti Brescia, leading over 600 members from across the province, emphasized the need for genuine debureaucratization. “Agricultural businesses are not asking for shortcuts, but for a real, concrete debureaucratization that restores time to work and dignity to those who produce,” Martinelli stated. He criticized the current system, where the term ‘simplification’ often conceals new requirements, procedures, and platforms that burden companies with responsibilities that should fall to public administration. Farmers are entangled in a complex, redundant, and often inefficient system that hinders investment and diverts energy from their primary work in fields and stables, from CAP management to nitrate regulations and environmental authorization practices.
Key Demands and Concerns
Protesters displayed banners with slogans such as “No agriculture, no food,” “Free market with equal rules,” “Less bureaucracy, more agriculture,” “Stop speculation in the meat supply chain,” “Agriculture under siege,” “Stop wild ground-mounted photovoltaics,” “Besieged by coypu and wild boar,” “Defend our pastures!”, “No stables, no milk,” “Fair prices for Italian rice,” “ASF, immediate compensation!”, “The land is cultivated, not compiled!”, “Wild animals wandering, agriculture collapsing,” and “Cultivated abroad, baptized in Italy? No thanks.”
Gianfranco Comincioli, president of Coldiretti Lombardy, highlighted the urgency of the protest, citing the Middle East crisis as a new threat of an energy shock. The conflict between the USA, Israel, and Iran risks replicating the impact of the war in Ukraine, which saw production factors like fertilizers (+49%) and energy (+66%) skyrocket and remain significantly higher four years later.
Testimonies from the Field
Nadia Turelli, regional head of Coldiretti Lombardy and provincial head of Coldiretti Brescia Women, an olive grower from Lake Iseo, spoke about the challenges faced by olive farming. She noted that Lombard olive growing, with over 80% of its 2,370 hectares located in Brescia province, is a significant agricultural reality that protects the landscape, supports tourism, and safeguards territories. Turelli called for more concrete regional attention to defense and adaptation of plants, real support for the supply chain and mills, and economic recognition of the quality of Lombard oil, especially in the face of extreme weather events, phytopathologies, and parasites.
Luigi Biolatti, a Franciacorta winegrower, addressed the heavy bureaucracy in the wine sector. He stated that excessive bureaucracy in regional and national mechanisms and a lack of genuine simplification burden businesses, significantly impacting timelines and costs. He called for a clear, updated, and fully functional viticultural cadastre to help businesses enhance their viticultural heritage and respond more effectively to evolving markets.
Laura Marchesini, a pig farmer from Bedizzole, described the severe difficulties faced by Brescia’s pig farming sector, the leading province in Italy with over 1.2 million heads. She emphasized that the sector is brought to its knees by endless bureaucracy and delayed compensation for damages. Marchesini highlighted that agricultural businesses are not asking for welfare but for simpler rules and certain timelines, warning that without quick responses, the future of a strategic sector for the local agri-food industry is at risk.
Vice-president Giovanni Martinelli reiterated the importance of product origin, especially for milk. He stressed that it is unacceptable for foreign milk, curd, and processed products to replace Italian ones at cutthroat prices, calling for Coldiretti’s action on the customs code to be timely and effective. He urged the Lombardy region, which produces almost 50% of Italian milk, to provide significant support on these issues.
The Chessboard of Threats
A giant chessboard was set up in the square, symbolizing the precarious situation of agricultural businesses. Lombard agriculture, represented by the white king, was surrounded by numerous black pawns, symbolizing threats such as unfair competition, below-cost prices, extreme weather events, uncontrolled wildlife, delayed compensation, land consumption, and the looming fear of a new energy shock.
Coldiretti’s Priorities for Intervention
Coldiretti Lombardy’s thousands of farmers and breeders gathered under the Pirellone to demand institutional intervention on several priorities: combating bureaucracy and unfair practices, supporting struggling supply chains, promoting local food, controlling wildlife, and defending fertile land.
The organization warns that the Middle East conflict is already causing a rapid increase in agricultural diesel prices, rising by 40-45 cents per liter in just a few days, coinciding with the resumption of fieldwork. This situation led Coldiretti to file a national complaint with the Public Prosecutor’s Office to investigate potential speculative maneuvers.
The difficult international situation threatens to deliver a fatal blow to agricultural businesses already suffering from unfair competition from uncontrolled imports of low-quality products cultivated with substances banned in Europe. These products can also be ‘Italianized’ through minimal processing under current EU regulations. Therefore, Coldiretti Lombardy demands the abolition of the customs code rule that allows a foreign product to become ‘Made in Italy’ through the ‘trick’ of the last transformation. They also advocate for promoting and valuing local food in school and hospital canteens.
President Gianfranco Comincioli stressed that the same rules followed by Lombard agricultural businesses must be respected by those selling products in Italy. Consumers have the right to know the origin of their food, requiring full transparency with mandatory origin labeling for all products.
Uncontrolled imports also depress prices paid to farmers, with several sectors, including rice, corn, milk, and pigs, already operating below cost. Farmers are also requesting a regional fund for struggling supply chains and guaranteed compensation for indirect damages from emergencies like African Swine Fever or avian flu.
Climate change poses another significant threat, with extreme weather events causing over 20 billion euros in damages to Italian agriculture over the past four years. Coldiretti calls for strengthening subsidized insurance policies.
The uncontrolled spread of wild animals causes continuous direct and indirect damage, devastating pastures, destroying crops, attacking flocks, spreading infections, and causing accidents. Proper management of these animals is no longer postponable. In some mountain areas, the situation is so severe that farmers, tired of reporting damages and receiving delayed and underestimated compensation, are considering abandoning their activities.
Protecting mountain agricultural businesses, which safeguard the territory and prevent hydrogeological instability, is another priority. This goal can be achieved by relaunching the “Mountain Product” certification.
Excessive bureaucracy, which costs businesses 100 working days annually, and a jungle of controls by different entities checking the same things, also hinder fieldwork. Giovanni Martinelli, vice-president of Coldiretti Brescia, called for genuine simplification, full operability of the SuperCAA, and implementation of the Single Register of Controls.
Finally, defending fertile land against soil consumption is a long-standing priority for Lombard agriculture, especially with the proliferation of requests for large ground-mounted photovoltaic plants. Coldiretti emphasizes a model of energy transition where agricultural businesses are protagonists through rooftop solar systems, energy communities, and advanced sustainable agrivoltaics, integrated into the principle of multifunctionality to serve agricultural activity rather than instrumental and speculative logics.
The flash mob by Coldiretti Lombardy’s youth on the giant chessboard symbolized the many unresolved problems faced by agricultural businesses. They symbolically placed products from fields and stables, along with farm tools, on the chessboard, representing the daily struggle for survival.
Source: https://bsnews.it/2026/03/10/milano-protesta-agricoltori-coldiretti-lombardia-da-burocrazia-a-pratiche-sleali-le-priorita/
