Farmers in a vicious circle

Thirty years after farmers first started blocking roads with their tractors, little has changed in the primary sector. Farmers are aging and their number is shrinking, good arable land remains relatively scarce and cooperatives exist mainly as a lever of pressure on the government of the time, while training is still lagging.

With more than half of farm income coming from subsidies, produce starts cheaply from the field and arrives at the consumer at a much higher price. Products are sold in bulk abroad and standardized with the identity of another country of origin and at better prices, in the international markets.

Greece’s agricultural production does have prospects. However, not only the producers themselves but politicians especially need to abandon the benefits-subsidies model – because the tractors may leave the highways, but the problems will remain.

As for foreign products illegally labelled as Greek, it is often not done by crafty traders, but by agricultural cooperatives, which are the protagonists in, say, the import of apples from Poland and North Macedonia and kiwis from Turkey and Iran that are sold as Greek.

Of course, strict controls – which are not being carried out – would help, but farmers could better protect their products if they had really strong cooperatives to directly manage produce.

If there were adequate irrigation networks, if organized groups bought the agricultural supplies, if technology was used to a greater and more efficient level, if there were Greek varieties of agricultural products, then the cost of production would be greatly reduced, in which case the profit margin would increase.

Making a rough estimate, scientists at the Agricultural University in Athens found that 25% of the fertilizers used in the field are not needed, leading to a huge waste of money. However, there are no qualified people to stand by the farmers and advise them, except perhaps private agronomists, who often promote specific products.