Yannis Tsironis,
Former Minister of Environment and Rural Development,
October 2023
THE REASONS OF THE ABANDONMENT
Since the end of the civil war in 1949, the Greek countryside suffered an incredible exodus.
People moved (often violently) to the main cities or abroad (Germany, USA, and Australia).
Of course, post-war poverty was a common phenomenon, in most European countries, both
between winners and losers, on both sides of the Iron Curtain. Therefore, urbanisation is not a
Greek phenomenon. But in Greece there were also other reasons that multiplied the exodus:
– The civil war violence between siblings, families, and old friends, could not be
forgotten in the village’s closed societies. Revenge phenomena occurred and obliged a lot
of people (mainly the defeated), to abandon their homelands. The situation in the big
cities was much easier because anybody could make a new start among strangers.
– The Nazi’s collaborators in other countries were lynched or even executed. In
Greece due to the civil war, they were absorbed by the national army that was fighting
against the communists, and finally, they became pylons of the new regime. As a result,
the majority of Greek post-war governments have been extremely authoritarian. This fact
finally led to the Greek dictatorship of 1967. Political violence, even murders, was common
and an everyday situation.
Due to this discrimination a lot of people (even not communists but just liberals) not only
have been persecuted by the regime, but they couldn’t even find a work.
– As we shall see in the next chapter, the Greek countryside is not easily accessible.
So, during the long history of Greece, countryside populations have always been
semiautonomous and the central regimes have always been afraid of them. During the
decades 50s to the 70s, the authoritarian regime did not give enough support to those
areas. No railway, horrible roads, insufficient public services and medical care,
inexperienced teachers. The sources from the Marshall Plan that had not been spent on
civil war expences, have been mainly channeled in the cities and especially between the
supporters of the new regime.
– We also need to mention the depreciation of the traditional civilization:
In the movies, magazines, newspapers, and later on TV programs, the cultural tradition of
the countryside people have been presented as brutal, naïve, and regressive. Even their
professions have been disdained. Most people between post-war generations still believe
that only people with low mental capabilities could become farmers or breeders.
Nowadays, this fact remains very important because some countryside professions still
have a low reputation.
Even the rich cultural tradition of those areas has been ridiculed. During the sixties, and
especially after the defeat of the dictatorship, young people were ashamed to admit that
they danced traditional dances or that they were listening to traditional songs. Only during the two last decades, young people start to rediscover the richness of the Greek traditional
culture.
The second wave of abandonment.
After the end of the dictatorship and especially during the first social democratic regime of
PASOK after 1981, the mentality started to change, but during this period, the economic factor became the main reason for a new wave of abandonment. Schools were shut down because it was financially impossible to maintain teachers for 2 or 3 children. Medical infrastructure could not be supported in villages of 10-20 people. Even private sector services, like a supermarket, a restaurant, a cinema, and a sports club could not survive.
As a consequence, the majority of young people who had remained in the villages have been obliged to move into bigger cities to finish school and join a university. Later on, they found jobs in the cities and probably brought their elderly parents along, in order to provide them with sufficient medical care.
Therefore we have reached the present vicious circle: The abandonment provokes a lack of economic interest and efficient public services, and this lack of economic interest and public services provokes urther abandonment.
A SHORT PRESENTATION OF THE GREEK PARTICULARITY
Most people, even Greeks, believe that Greece is the homeland of sea and beaches. They ignore that Greece is one of the most mountainous European countries with an average
altitude of 498 meters above sea level.
But this is not the main particularity. Spain for example, has a higher altitude but is generally a
flat country. Italy also has a bigger altitude because of its north alpine region. On the contrary,
almost all Greece, is covered by steep mountains that divide its territory with narrow valleys
between them.
Those mountains divide Greece into small regions, each one of them having totally different
ecosystems, climatic conditions, flora, and fauna. An expert in olive oil cultivation in Messenia
could be proven totally ignorant if he tries to use his experience, a few kilometers further in
Laconia.
This division becomes even more important if we take into account the hundreds of islands.
Literally, each one of them seems to belong to a different universe.
For centuries, this particularity caused the autonomous character of the cities, and the difficulty
of the empires (Persians, Romans, Turks) to impose a central authority. Even Nazis, despite their up-to-date army, finally managed to control less than 10% of Greek territories during the 2 nd War.
This territorial particularity creates many advantages but also disadvantages that seem difficult to understand by investors, institutions in other countries, and opinion makers in Western countries like Germany, Belgium Netherlands, and Great Britain.
They speak about economies of scale and imagine the evolution of fewer big enterprises that will replace the great number of small ones. (Mc Kinsey: Greece 10 years ahead) They cannot understand the reasons why national television needs so many thousands of transponders to cover less audience than the Netherlands which only has one. Ιndicatively despite the fact that Santorini island has 3 transponders, still part of the island has no signal, so people are obliged to pay for satellite connection.
International institutions and opinion makers cannot conceive that a truck needs double the time and fuel to cover the same distances because of the territorial relief.
They cannot imagine that an agricultural unit with centralized management fails to make effective decisions on the field, because the conditions are differentiated day by day even in adjacent areas. Even the wages and the negotiations with the providers are different from area to area. A profitable price of any raw material in one area could be catastrophic in another.
Such particularities cannot easily be understood by people who have no production experience
in those areas. Such special conditions are not rare in other countries. Why, for example, the
famous French winery is based on many very small producers? Those small units are extremely
sustainable and export unique and expensive wines all over the world. I cannot imagine any
wise investor who could suggest the merging of those units into fewer big ones to achieve
economy of scale.
The same particularity is noted in the German brewing production.
On the other hand, this division of Greece into small semi-isolated regions incites an interesting
biodiversity, with a lot of products being unique.
I always remember the phrase of an Italian importer of Greek products at a conference about
the future of Greek agriculture. A farmer asked him, how he could compete with the low prices
of Turkish and Egyptian products. The Italian answered: “You Greeks sell Ferraris for Fiats”
The truth is that we have “a lot of Ferraris”, but due to the abandonment, most agricultural
producers are old and they cannot perceive the value of their products. Even those who
understand the value of their unique products do not know how to communicate to
international consumers that they actually produce “Ferraris and not Fiats”.
THE CONSEQUENCES AND THE URGENT NEED FOR THE COUNTRYSIDE REVIVAL
It is quite impossible in those few pages to describe the consequences on the cultural and social level. The second generation of those people who have been moved almost violently from their homelands into the big cities, have a deficit of social responsibility. They are “idiots” (with the ancient Greek origin of this word): “Ιδιώτης» is the person who doesn’t care about the community and is totally indifferent and inconsistent, about community problems. The accurate translation of the word “ιδιώτης”, means “private”, but in ancient Greek democracy, the meaning became “a selfish person without honor and wisdom”. This
interpretation becomes today’s meaning of the word “idiot” Ιndicatively, many New Greeks that live in the cities do not care about having a good school. A bad school is no problem for them as long as they can ensure more cognitive resources for their own children. They do not care to ameliorate the hospitals as long as they can bribe a doctor or some nurses to bypass the problems. They do not care about bureaucracy so long as they can exploit those weaknesses for their personal interest.
At a political level, such mentalities lead to clientelism and corruption. Finally, the old moral commitments among villagers have been lost, but they have never been replaced by a new citizen morality.
All those facts are crucial and they must be discussed but do not concern the present document.
Here we must evaluate the economic and environmental consequences.
Starting from the economic field, the abandonment develops into a loop that suffocates the
economy:
– I already mentioned that schools are shut down. The fact is, that it’s impossible to close all schools. We can merge the schools of 10 villages of 2-3 children each, into one but the result remains costly and not viable: We are still paying a school for 10-20 children, and at the same time paying a different taxi for each village that transports every morning its children, to the school and every afternoon back to home. Despite the high costs finally, most of those children have two choices: Remain in the village without finishing the lyceum, and further education to become a competitive farmer, or abandon the village at the age of 15 to finish school and join a university. A lot of money is invested for each child without depreciation. The only alternative would be to close all schools in those areas. This means that some years later when the elderly pass away, those areas or whole islands will remain with zero inhabitants.
– The same problem occurs with medical care. Greece’s territorial relief causes inevitable problems in the area of emergency medical response. During an accident or a heart attack, the time needed for first aid and transportation to a nearby hospital are inacceptable. But also in the hospital, how many faculties and modern installations like an MRI could be supported if peripheral hospitals serve only a few thousands of
people?
– Furthermore the cost of the simplest public service rises exponentially. The mayor of Petritsi village told me, that in 1916 the cost of replacing any road lamp in his municipality was 2000 times higher per citizen if we compare the same cost in Thessaloniki. It could be worse if we took into account that in Thessaloniki’s 19 Km 2 area live almost 320,000 people and Petritsi is only inhabited by 1690 people in an area of 117 Km 2 . I am afraid that the Petritsi Mayor’s efforts to provide the village with electricity and lamp posts, did not stop the abandonment. From 2011 to 2021, Petritsi lost 12.5% of its population. In 1940, when Greece had only 7,4 million inhabitants, Petritsi had almost 4.900 population.
– If public services fail to be effective and financially sustainable, then, private services are even worse. Bank branches, commercial shops, restaurants, and even the local “coffee shops” shut down one after the other. This situation raises even further the cost of any enterprise in the area. The employees of any activity need to spend a lot of time and fuel to reach a bank or to discuss with an agronomist.
But the consequences are not limited to the activities in the abandoned areas:
– The maintenance of a few people in those areas has an impact on the whole national economy. We already have mentioned that public services cost a tremendous amount per person, and that means “per taxpayer”. During memorandums, there was a big discussion about the number of public servants. No one bothered to mention that we need at least one teacher, a policeman and one doctor in every small island whose GDP is not enough even for those three salaries. The 60% of the Greek territory
produces less than 3% of the Greek GDP, but needs police, streets, electrical networks,
water supply, and municipalities, with an equal amount of employees who support the
maintenance of those infrastructures. This permanent deficit is one of the main reasons
that the Greek economy remains vulnerable.
– This summer we confronted mega-fires in many forests. People discuss about the
climate crisis but people in the cities cannot understand that 40 years ago, those forests
were feeding 30 million sheep and goats, which were cleaning the soil and diminishing
the combustible materials. At the same time, a proportion of trees had been cut down.
Many areas between forests were cultivated, and that prevented fires from spreading.
The recent fires cost billions.
– Now we are before another challenge: the flood disasters. In a harmonious
society, floods can be avoided in two ways: Firstly, by creating infrastructures and water
reserves in the mountains that create obstacle in the water momentum and secondly by
avoiding any obstacle downstream.
The society we described in the previous chapters did the opposite: The mayors and
politicians avoided spending money for infrastructures upstream, where they had no
political interest and voters to favor. On the other hand, people who moved to urban
environments put political pressure to diminish the river surface, and to exploit the
earth. A lot of streets, houses, and schools, were built in territories that previously were
streams. So instead of building obstacles upstream and liberating the streams
downstream, we did the opposite.
To conclude, it is evident that is impossible to establish sustainable economic growth, with 60%
of Greece abandoned and almost without contribution to the GDP. In addition, this situation
provokes not only economic but also social and cultural implications We must also take into
consideration that the vicious circle now disaffects the food production that makes the Greek
society vulnerable to any international instability.
THE SOLUTION
Any solution, in order to be sustainable, must be financially profitable and socially acceptable.
At the same time, we have to confront challenges in different fields. We should not only try to
eliminate the reasons that cause the present decline of the population, but create attractive
conditions that will reverse the phenomenon as well:
– CHOICE OF FIELD: With what criteria shall we choose which villages shall berevived first?
– PEOPLE: Which families will decide to move to the reviving villages?
– INFRASTRUCTURES AND FACILITIES: What are the minimum conditions that ensure a decent way of b living for the new inhabitants
– ECONOMY: What are the economic activities in the revived areas?
– FINANCE: Which institutions will finance the whole project?
CHOICE OF FIELD
In Greece exist hundreds of small villages with great potential to become the communities of
the future. But without priorities, any financial program would collapse before ensuring the
viability of new communities.
That is why we need to set criteria and priorities:
– Even in the optimum scenario where we have a 500-1000 population movementto a village, it is almost certain that at the beginning, medical care and entertainment
facilities could not be compared to those of a big city or even a town. Therefore, the
best way to convince people to move to any village is the proximity to a city. So our first
priority is to look for villages that are located about half an hour from a city, by car.
– A totally deserted village is not the best choice to start with. Even a population of
a few elderly villagers is an important advantage. Not only do they already have some
infrastructure, but mainly they are a treasure of knowledge themselves, especially when
it comes to particular details that nobody else can find in written.
– Support of the local and regional authorities.
– Local investors that would choose to invest in the new beginning. This criterion
does not mean that foreign investors or funds are not welcome. The whole project must
be financially attractive both to international developers, international funds and investors. But keep in mind that international funds and foreigners are only interested in
profitable and successful results. Whereas, local villagers mainly care about the future
of their fatherland. Therefore their participation is a more safe criterion to ensure the
project’s success.
– The proximity of an international airport is a very big advantage. We should note
that our target group is not visitors who travel by plane to spend a whole week lying
under an umbrella on a beach. On the other side, it is difficult to find visitors that would
like to spend 4 hours in a bus after a 4-hour flight.
Such criteria of course are also related to the possible financial activities of the village. Each
development project could have some special advantages that overlap distance or other
disadvantages. For example, people travel for hours to reach a world-famous climbing field. But
the whole idea is to revive abandoned areas, and not invest in already famous destinations.
PEOPLE
What kind of people could move to a village?
– Mainly young people that have financial difficulties in the city.
– People with ecological mentality, who dream to live in a small community, without
pollution and with self-sufficiency in high quality food.
– Refugees and emigrants.
– Public servants (policemen, teachers, employees in the municipality office)
– Self-employees that serve the above categories (shop owners, pharmacists,
plumbers, hairdressers, etc.)
– Pensioners from northern European countries.
– Digital nomads
INFRASTRUCTURES AND FACILITIES
In an abandoned village there are a lot of empty buildings.
We can exploit them or buid new ones. The main choice is to rent a sufficient number of those
buildings from the owners. The rent period must be long (up to 99 years) and no less than 20
years.
A study shall predict how many houses are necessary for the permanent inhabitants, for the
visitors, and the built space predicted for professional purposes.
A convenient agreement with the owners could be to rent the house gratis. In return, the
developer shall have the obligation to renovate the building, with the most up to date
facilities, like carbon neutrality. The owners have the right to use the house for some weeks
per year, in order to spend holidays in their homeland. Most Greek citizen’s dream is to
renovate their parents’ house in the village, but they cannot afford it.
In this development plan, the developer shall also renovate some professional spaces (shops,
restaurants, offices)
The developer shall also ensure electricity and air conditioning from renewable, water, and 5G
connections.
The developer should also ensure a bank agreement to maintain the branch operation.
The state shall ensure the functioning of a police station, school, medical care provision (with
tele-medicine for urgent cases), and a center that provides public services (issuing certificates,
tax services, etc) The purpose is to minimize any visit to the city. The idea is to use the most
modern technologies, to ensure the maximum autonomy of the modern community and the
best interconnection with the cities and the rest of the world.
ECONOMY
The main idea is to create a community whose GDP growth will cover the investment costs of
its revival.
To achieve the above, we should ensure two main parameters:
– The values of the land and properties must be multiplied
– The life of the inhabitants of the village must be more attractive than their
previous stay in the city
Those two parameters interact with each other.
Firstly we need to choose the financial activities that could be developed in the area:
– Livestock: As we mentioned before the territorial relief in most Greek areas is
very steep, and this is a disadvantage for cultivations. On the other hand, this is ideal for
traditional livestock, mainly sheep and goats, whose products can be famous for their
unique quality. For example, few people know that the meat of many Greek breeds is
rich in ω-3 lipids, which is the most important substance against heart disease.
– Greek honey: It is rich in pharmaceutical substances, even richer than the world-
famous Manuca.
– Pharmaceutical plants: Thymian, Oregano, and even the olive leaves, are an
unknown treasure.
– Farming: As we mentioned, the territorial relief does not favor intense agriculture
but in certain areas, it is ideal for some excellent products: Olive oil, winery, raisins, silk,
and fruits.
– Forestry: It is an unknown treasure. Greek wood is one of the most expensive
woods worldwide but in Greece, there are no institutions to certify its worth and
quality. Another treasure is the mushrooms, and especially the truffle. It’s a shared
secret that Italians collect our truffles without permission, and then smuggle them to
Italy, where they certify and export them all over the world, at high prices.
– Tourism: The landscape diversity, the flora and fauna variety, and the excellent
climate, are examples of the unique advantage of the Greek mountains. If we also take
into consideration that anybody can start their day by enjoying the alpine landscape and
later on the day get to swim on a virgin beach, then we can easily understand that those
abandoned mountains have strong advantages over Switzerland or Austria. To those
strong points, we must also add the Greek narrative and the ancient monuments that
exist in every corner of Greece.
There are many tourist activities that could be developed and offer new added value:
o Cycling tourism
o Hiking
o Religion tourism
– Computer science: Japan authorities have given a strong boost to their abandoned
villages by offering motives to the software companies to establish branches in small
villages. Software has a big advantage: Neither the first raw materials nor the products
need roads, railways or trucks to be transported. Also, digital nomads could live in a
village without any professional obstacles.
– Refugees/immigrants’ education: We already have a relevant program
certified by the UN, which includes 6 months of education for each foreigner who
request to work in the EU. This program offers the learning of two European
languages (Greek and another one), the learning of European and Greek institutions,
and certifying professional skills, especially for people who lost their college
certificates, during immigration.
It is certain that Greek diversity prevents the creation of one general business plan that could
be applied in all cases. Every settlement needs a different SWOT analysis. Activities which
present profit in one case could be inapplicable in another.
But the general idea is common: A lot of hidden opportunities exist in the abandoned Greek
countryside.
FINANCING
The revival of any settlement, even the smallest village, needs serious economic recourses. We
do not propose an investment with a fast return but a long-term project.
It cannot be achieved without the support of the central state and the local authorities.
We also need European support. Cohesion Policy pays particular attention to European regions
that face severe and permanent geographical or demographic challenges such as mountains,
islands, and sparsely populated areas.
Furhermore, UN provides funds for the acceptance and education of refugees and immigrants.
All the above resources should be investigated and every possibility and opportunity must be
exploited.
However, in the past, a lot of resources have been channeled into similar projects without
reversing the tendency for further abandonment.
The main difference between previous attempts and our new proposal is that our first target is
to investigate its economic, environmental, and social viability.
An economic activity that is based on European or national resources could attract some people
to work, but when the resources end, the activity stops or moves back abroad.
In our proposal, we have to investigate if the revival remains profitable even without any
external financial support and if the new villagers prefer to remain in the area, even without a
granted house.
Of course, to break the vicious circle that we mentioned before, we need some external
financing and state support.
But the main question we must answer is:
“If this village hadn’t been abandoned after the war, and today was a village of 1000
inhabitants, could it be a sustainable community? Could it produce competitive products?
Could it be an attractive destination? If we make a SWOT analysis of this community, can we
predict a positive future?”
The most serious danger is to consider our wishes as serious predictions. Nobody can rule out
the negative scenario that an area, for economic and environmental reasons, is not anymore
able to support the population that had 100 years ago. Not every area is bound to be
profitable. This is why a SWOT analysis and a feasibility study are necessary and
indispensable for each case.
This is a common misuse of the CAP. The CAP is the best tool to protect and develop European
agriculture. But it is an economic and social suicide to have people living in the countryside and
surviving just only with the CAP money, and without a sustainable professional activity. Even
worse, there are people who do not care about developing their activities to be sustainable,
and they are satisfied with the CAP support.
Therefore, we should focus our efforts into developing areas that have the capability to regain
the population that had before the violent exodus in the 50s or 60s. This development must be
profitable, create wealth, and not become a black hole that absorbs public and private
resources.
If the answer is YES, then it will be easy to support the revival with financial tools like the
Agrofund as described below. To conclude, the European and national resources are
indispensable for the start-up, but must not be taken into consideration for a feasibility study or
a SHOT analysis.
THE CAPABILITIES OF AN AGROFUND
The present value of the agricultural land in the abandoned areas is less than 5000€/ha. If this
land is cultivated it is easy to achieve a turnover of about 2000€/ha. In modern units, the
turnover rises up to 17000€/ha. This is the average turnover in Holland, but in Crete, we have
farms with a turnover of more than 50.000€/ha. Israelis in the dessert achieve turnovers of
about 17.000€/ha
But let’s be mediocre and imagine an average turnover of 5000€/ha and a profit of 2000€/ha.
What will the value of this land be, after its development? A normal P/E prediction for land
could be about 20 and this fact raises the value of the exploited land to 40.000€/ha.
Taking into account the numbers above, a financial fund that owns abandoned land with a total
surface 5000ha, should have an initial value of about 250 million€. But if this land is sustainably
exploited, its value after 3-4 years of crops will be about 2 billions€.
This tremendous leverage isn’t magical. It is based on today’s tragic fact that the land’s value in
those areas is almost zero. It indicates today’s picture of abandonment. But financially this also
indicates a road paved with opportunities.
This example is about land. But also the prices/values of buildings in the abandoned villages are
at the same poor level.
However, the advantages of a financial fund are not limited to the leverage of the values.
A fund that owns 1000ha olive oils has a mediocre profit of 2000€/ha. It is easy to address a
hedge fund and create a SWAP based on the profits of the next 20 years. And with this SWAP in
its portfolio, the fund could finance the renovation of buildings, and other infrastructures which
have added profits.
An AGROFUND gives the opportunity to a foreigner to invest in Greek agriculture, without
having the obligation to control the good management of each activity (farm, hotel, tour
operators, etc.)
It also gives the opportunity to land or building owners to contribute with their properties to
the Fund and become partners in the development project.
On the other side, the developer because of the fund, finds cheap money and investors who are
committed to the success. That is why in the previous chapter we mentioned the importance of
participation in the Fund, not only of international investors, but mainly of local people who
have the dream of their homeland development. A possible weather disaster could threaten a
developer who has debts. But a developer who has partners in a FUND, can confront “the rainy
days” and the extreme weather conditions due to the climate crisis, with resilience and
stability.
Moreover, the institutions that guarantee the FUND have the composure to investigate the
viability of any new economic proposal, and therefore can better protect the project.
SUMMARY
A huge part of Greece has been violently depopulated after the civil war.
This abandonment led to a vicious circle: The abandonment provoked economic and social
regression, and the regression provoked further abandonment.
The fact that more than 60% of the Greek land contributes less than 3% of the GDP causes
serious negative consequences that make the Greek economy vulnerable.
This abandonment has also serious social consequences that feed clientelism and corruption.
Therefore the revival of the abandoned areas is an urgent and crucial priority.
The good news is, that this revival could also be a great economic opportunity and a very
interesting field of long-term investments with high returns.
