(Photo: Lezsec Kruk; Edited: LW / TO)
When I tell people that I had a challenging time finding organic produce in Greece this past summer, the reaction is mostly the same: In Greece — the land of Zeus and honey? How can that be?
A meager 3.8 percent of farmland in Greece is dedicated to organic farming, according to the European Commissioner Phil Hogan.
The romantic notion and collective imprint that everything in Greece is pristine is understandable, given that farming is part of the country’s cultural fabric and legacy. Organophosphates and neonicotinoids weren’t part of the ancient world. Furthermore, when it comes to Greek agriculture, the nuclear family has always been the main source of labor.
“Nearly every major Greek author, philosopher and statesman, despite his education and often elite status, had a farm,” writes Davis Hanson in Warfare and Agriculture in Classical Greece.
Today, only about 13 percent of the Greek population has some form of agriculturally related employment. That said, the agricultural sector is roughly 3.9 percent of the national economy, which amounts to about €10.7 billion annually.
Greece continues to be one of the world’s leading producers of olive oil and raisins. Wheat is another main crop, along with corn and other grains, cotton, figs, oranges, peaches, potatoes, sugar beets, tobacco and tomatoes. These commercial monoculture crops, however, are mostly grown conventionally, with the use of chemicals.
Despite the exquisite mountains, the Aegean Sea, and interactions with foxes and sea turtles, the village of Kardamili, located in the Peloponnese, comes with tales of evident poisoning. Farmers from the village tell me they have found goats that they believe died due to Monsanto’s Roundup Ready that was acquired on the black market. Meanwhile, olive groves are covered in massively sprayed pesticides. Even though there are only 400 people in the village where I reside part of the year, big agriculture is not too far away. In fact, large…