At a time when rhetoric on economic sovereignty and breaking free from external dependencies dominates public discourse, the announcement of a €3 million Italian funding package to “revitalise the tomato sector” rings like an admission of weakness, if not a glaring contradiction. For a state that champions sovereignism and self-sufficiency, reaching out for help with such basic horticulture raises a fundamental question: can one truly claim sovereignty while depending on Europe to grow one’s own tomatoes?
Self-sufficiency cannot be funded from abroad
True sovereignty is not bought with foreign subsidies or loans, even when they are labelled “development cooperation.” If a country chooses the path of autonomy, it must take on the mechanisms: mobilise national savings, reallocate its own budget priorities, and trust in local ingenuity.
The tomato is neither a cutting-edge microprocessor nor space technology requiring complex Western knowledge transfer. It is a crop that local farmers have mastered for generations. Injecting millions of euros from Rome to set up small-scale irrigation or processing units reveals a chronic inability to structure our own economy through our own means. It perpetuates the cycle of aid, dressed up in new managerial jargon.
Food and security planning: a glaring void
Beyond the ideological inconsistency, this project highlights a much graver problem: the total absence of serious strategic planning, both in food and security terms.
How can one conceive of a viable three-year agricultural development plan in structurally unstable zones, without strict coordination with territorial security? Developing production basins without first guaranteeing the secure free movement of goods and people smacks of amateurism. Small-scale irrigation infrastructure, however costly, will be useless if producers cannot access their fields or if harvests are abandoned in the face of security threats.
Moreover, the lack of planning is evident in value chain management:
- The diagnosis is well known: The country mass-produces from January to June, then loses everything for lack of storage, while importing tomato paste for the rest of the year.
- The response is short-sighted: Instead of building a genuine national agro-industry financed by local capital or endogenous public-private partnerships, the country relies on external funds to “patch the cracks.”
For a genuine break
If the chosen sovereignist path is serious, it demands a radical break with these practices. Revitalising the tomato sector or any other strategic sector requires rigorous planning that links land security, patriotic financing, and protection of the domestic market against massive imports.
Continuing to celebrate €3 million envelopes from Europe keeps the country in a facade of sovereignty, where speeches are self-reliant but plates remain at the mercy of Western capitals. It is time to move from posturing to real planning.
