Export-dependent Agriculture, Revenue Crisis and Agrarian Productivity Involution [The Greek Case (1860s-1930s)]

This paper evaluates the growth of the agricultural gross output and productivity of land and labour in Greece. The Greek economy depended heavily agricultural exports (currants and later tobacco) to cover its imports of wheat and other foodstuffs and to maintain the exchange rate of its currency. As a result, the country followed a unique trajectory (different from that of other agricultural exporting Mediterranean countries) from the Great Depression to the 1920s. The agricultural income crisis erupted late in the 1890s and early 1900s, pushing a large number of peasants to emigrate and, temporarily, relaxing the land-labour ratio without transforming the agrarian system and techniques. The destabilizing political and demographic results of the wars (radical agrarian reform, gigantic exchange of population and intense socio-political conflicts) made sure that the 1920s was a period of falling productivity and stagnant output, leading once again the land-labour ratio to record low levels. The agrarian system showed no major transformation other than the rise of its latent rural unemployment.