Annual evaluation report 2023 of the Aosta Valley RDP
- Evaluation
- Long-term Vision for Rural Areas
- Jobs, Growth and Equality in Rural Areas
- Agricultural Production
- Evaluation
The report aims to understand the development trajectories in the Aosta Valley.
- Italy
- Programming period: 2014-2022
- Socio-economic impacts
The object of the assessment is to observe the change in behaviour induced by the Aosta Valley Rural Development Programme (RDP), characterised by the interaction between farmers, processors, institutions and all the other actors living in the territories (i.e. residents, tourists, companies linked upstream and downstream with the agricultural holding).
The methodology is based, through a group concept mapping technique, on:
- The co-construction of a common understanding regarding the construction of clusters of regional farms.
- The sharing of results and a consensus on the elements that characterise future choices.
The outcome resulted in the identification of the clusters of regional companies and their representation within the space of the trajectories (competitiveness, ecological footprint)
During 2023, the subject of this report, 60 randomly extracted companies, were interviewed. Given the small sample (60 beneficiaries) the accuracy of the results is in an intermediate range of reliability.
Farmers stress the importance of investments in agricultural infrastructure, in particular, to facilitate mechanisation and irrigation in response to climate change. There is a degree of immobility and insufficient planning of collective investment by improvement and remediation consortia, which should instead play a crucial role in providing a solid and efficient infrastructure and service base to benefit all agricultural activities across sectors. The theme of sustainability is crucial, with a focus on the importance of managing natural resources, such as water, more effectively.
Furthermore, there is a clear concern for small farms, which often find themselves at a disadvantage compared to large companies, both in terms of access to aid and in their ability to manage operational and bureaucratic challenges.
Targeted policies to support small farms are therefore the only barrier to abandonment. To conclude, farmers highlight bureaucratic difficulties and delays in accessing funds, which prevent farms from responding to operational needs in a timely manner.
Author(s)
Lattanzio KIBS