Two billion euros! This could possibly be the price of the sequence of local weather disasters that hit the nation between mid-July and mid-September, as estimated by Moschos Korasidis, director of the Nationwide Union of Agricultural Cooperatives of Greece. Giorgos Stratakos, secretary basic of the Greek ministry of agriculture, agrees: “It’s a international downside.”
Dadia (Evros), September 2023. A Canadair from the French Civil Safety group, on standby as a part of the European mutual help operation. Photograph: Fabien Perrier
The fires first devastated the realm round Alexandroupoli, the primary metropolis within the agricultural area of Evros within the northeast of the nation. In addition they handed via the islands of Rhodes and Corfu, and the realm round Mount Parnes, the inexperienced lung close to the capital Athens. Then Cyclones Daniel and Elias swept throughout the plains of Thessaly, the meals basket of the land. What’s going to it value to get better after such devastation?
That is the query that considerations Kiriaki Chatzisavvas, 37 years previous. A biologist by coaching, she left the pharmaceutical business to plant vines in Evros. “It was once a bit of paradise right here,” she explains, pointing to the hills. “Now it is a catastrophe.” The vines are charred, the bunches of grapes withered, the bottom suffering from ash. The seven-hectare property smells sharp. It can take her 5 to 10 years to get again to the identical manufacturing stage.
This winegrower wonders whether or not she will be able to proceed her apply primarily based on ‘biodiversity’. She explains: ‘My method was holistic, with little human intervention. I had even carried out an experiment with a beekeeper who positioned beehives across the vines. Nature is in stability once more.’ The fires that people couldn’t management destroyed biodiversity and destroyed vineyards, forests, agricultural lands and olive groves.
Beekeepers are involved. Michalis, 31, had about 200 beehives that he managed to avoid wasting. ‘Honey manufacturing is my solely supply of earnings. The place will my bees feed when the fireplace has burned every little thing?’
It is a main concern for Pavlos Georgiadis, an ethnobotanist from Evros who teaches at Hohenheim College in Germany: ‘The bees, that are important for pollination, can have nothing left to eat, even when the beehives are saved. On this state of affairs there’s a threat of desertification. Fires have a huge effect on biodiversity! 1000’s of olive timber have burned down, arable land has been destroyed and animals have died within the flames.’ The researcher continues: ‘Soil, air, water, biodiversity: every little thing has to do with these fires.’
Briefly: your entire ecosystem is in peril. ‘The organic well being of the soil might be affected by floods and fires. Will probably be troublesome to plant crops which might be prone to soil-borne ailments resulting from extreme humidity, but additionally to ‘root suffocation’ resulting from extended soil flooding,” explains Moschos Korasidis. In line with him, ‘this degradation of huge areas of agricultural land poses a severe risk to native and nationwide meals safety. Shortages of important crops might result in elevated dependence on imports, with detrimental penalties for the nation’s commerce stability.’
Evros area, September 2023. Photograph: Fabien Perrier
That warning could seem exaggerated, however the figures give an concept of the shortages and worth will increase now haunting Greece. In Evros, fires burned 94,000 hectares, virtually half of which had been forests. 8,114 hectares of agricultural land had been destroyed, 55.6% of the area’s whole. Even centuries-old olive timber are in peril. Overlaying virtually 15% of the nation’s agricultural land (over 400,000 hectares), Thessaly is a veritable agricultural reservoir and breadbasket. Thessaly additionally produces 7% of the nation’s sugar beets, 50% of its processed tomatoes and peas, 30% of its cotton and barley, 20% of the hay utilized in livestock farming, and far of its fruit and greens .
It’s a mainstay of meat, milk and cheese manufacturing. Moschos Korasidis warns: ‘We even have disasters with saved merchandise, comparable to grains’. In line with him, “between a considerably diminished provide of meals merchandise in the marketplace and severe issues resulting from hypothesis, the circumstances are ripe for worth will increase.” After ten years of financial and monetary disaster, one other disaster is looming, this time over meals manufacturing.
