At a time when speeches about economic sovereignty and breaking free from external dependencies dominate public discourse, the announcement of a 3-million-euro Italian funding package to “boost the tomato sector” sounds like an admission of weakness, if not a glaring contradiction. For a state that champions self-reliance and autarky, reaching out for help with such a basic sector as horticulture raises a fundamental question: can you truly call yourself sovereign when you depend on Europe to grow your own tomatoes?
Self-reliance cannot be funded from abroad
True sovereignty is not purchased with foreign subsidies or loans, even if they are labeled “development cooperation.” If a country chooses the path of autonomy, it must take on the mechanisms: mobilize national savings, redirect its own budget priorities, and trust its local ingenuity.
The tomato is neither a cutting-edge microprocessor nor a 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 shows a chronic inability to structure our own economy through our own means. This perpetuates the cycle of aid, dressed up in new managerial jargon.
Food and security planning: The glaring void
Beyond ideological inconsistency, this project highlights a much more serious problem: the total lack of seriousness in strategic planning, both in food and security terms.
How can one conceive 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 is sheer amateurism. The costly small-scale irrigation infrastructure will be worthless if farmers cannot access their fields or if harvests are abandoned in the face of security threats.
Moreover, the absence of planning is evident in the management of the value chain:
- The diagnosis is known: The country produces massively from January to June, then loses everything due to lack of storage, while importing tomato concentrate for the rest of the year.
- The response is short-sighted: Instead of building a true national agro-industrial sector financed by local capital or endogenous public-private partnerships, the country relies on external funds to “patch holes.”
For a genuine break
If the chosen sovereignist path is serious, it demands a radical break from these practices. Revitalizing the tomato sector—or any strategic sector—requires rigorous planning that links land security, patriotic financing, and protection of the domestic market against massive imports.
Continuing to celebrate envelopes of 3 million euros from Europe keeps the country in a facade of sovereignty, where speeches are autarkic but plates remain at the mercy of Western capitals. It is time to move from posturing to real planning.
