How the winefarmer can protect himself against problems as recently export to US

Taxes on wine, but not only: the meeting, sponsored by the Italian Farmers' Union in the Conterno and Fantino winery in Monforte, was an opportunity for an overview of the challenges facing producers in the Langhe. "We will know the truth about the rights on 19 February: on that day the lists of products for which they will be proclaimed will be published. Only then will we know if there will be wine". Dino Scanavino of Asti, national president of the Italian Farmers' Union, clarifies the chronological terms of the issue. The decision to tighten protectionist policies in Italy - the percentage of wine today is 25 percent of the value of goods entering the United States: it can be up to 100 percent - depends on the U.S. President Donald Trump.

It has been written that the casus belli would be the windy introduction of the web tax on the giants of Internet trade. "Reality is another: duties are a way to regulate the market in the absence of instruments such as bilateral agreements that can regulate trade," says the number one acronym of the agriculture union. "The market grows less than production, that's the real problem: if a state feels threatened, it reacts accordingly. Probably if we had the Ttip, the question of duties wouldn't arise. The reference to the agreement known as the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, the agreement between the US and the EU to create the largest area of free movement of goods in the world, has been a dead letter since 2016 after the failure of the talks. "Tariffs invest an area, that of global politics, that goes beyond the relationships wisely built by entrepreneurial capacity".

Relationships worth about one and a half billion euros of Italian wine exports around the world. "Let's not forget that exports to the UK alone amount to 830 million euros. Brexit is now a reality and will also be a bureaucratic burden determined by the border the goods will have to overcome." In addition to the duties, the challenges facing the wine world also affect the negotiations on the text that will regulate trade with the Mercosur zone, the organisation of the South American countries. "The fear is that our agri-food products will be used as a bargaining chip: we will have to compete with countries such as Argentina and Chile. This translates not only into meat and grain, but also into areas suitable for vines, and I'm afraid we won't have the strength to resist.

It is a bleak landscape, accompanied by a figure for direct growers, which counts 450,000 people in our country who are registered in social security: in absolute terms just over one percent of the active population of the peninsula. Companies with a turnover of between 50 and 200 thousand euros are the most numerous, with 150 thousand employees surveyed.  The way out of the impasse is firmly indicated by Claudio Conterno, who is responsible for Cia for the Granda. "That of rights is a story that already had a precedent in the 80s: in that case, a lot of wine was sent to the warehouse; after six months, the measure was withdrawn and the price collapsed," explains the barolist. "What we have to do is create new spaces for ourselves by exploring nations in which we have invested very little, by diluting our export quotas to avoid concentration of flows to one state. In this way, we can create lifebuoys and continue the policy of market aggression that has made France's fortune.

At the top of the list of objectives are the markets of Vietnam and Mongolia. "We do not produce to feed the world: our structures would not be suitable for this purpose. We produce for those who can spend more, the development prospects for our agriculture are linked to the qualification of intermediate products that have not yet found a strong identity", is Scanavino's conclusion.