The Ongoing Quest for a Model of Greek Agriculture

Contrary to all expectations, the accession of Greece to the EU did not signal the beginning of a move towards uniformity of agricultural structures. Rather, one could claim that it reinforced deviations and inequalities. The hybridization of the social forms of agricultural labour was intensified (co‐existence of petty commodity, contractual, wage labour or self‐consumption forms of production) and pluriactivity (at a household and individual level) is widespread. Thus the gap between a modernized, mechanized and intensive agriculture and a traditional, craft‐like and ‘unproductive’ agriculture has further deepened, dividing agricultural Greece into two: the coastal regions and extensive flat lands and the mountainous and island Greece. Finally, the relationship of the farmer with the land becomes differentiated and more complicated (sharp increase of land rented, but also perpetuation of traditional relations or the appearance of new, non‐traditional forms of family land development).