Agricultural Crisis and Food Insecurity in Greece. Challenges in Strengthening Local Agri-food Systems
摘要
The 2008/2009 economic crisis, alongside overlapping global shocks—including the COVID-19 pandemic, intensifying geopolitical tensions, the energy crisis, and climate change—has severely disrupted food supply chains at both global and local levels. These interconnected developments have driven more people into poverty and food insecurity, highlighting the need to relocalize agricultural production systems and strengthen local food supply chains as strategies for building resilience and ensuring equitable food access. In this context, micro-capitalist family farming is facing serious economic difficulties and production impasses due to a failing productivist agricultural model, market neoliberalization, and the financialization of agricultural resources, all of which are marginalizing small and medium-sized producers. Drawing on ethnographic material from a dynamic lowland area of intensive agriculture in Beotia, the chapter examines, through the experiences of local farmers: (a) the manifestations of the current multidimensional crisis—including economic pressure, land grabbing, the energy crisis, and challenges to professional identity; and (b) how producers cope with challenges in the production process—such as dwindling incomes, land loss, the erosion of rural identity, and obstacles to generational succession—while negotiating the broader shift towards the relocalization of agricultural production systems.