Farmers' attitudes and landscape change: evidence from the abandonment of terraced cultivations on Lesvos, Greece

Agricultural landscapes are the product of the interaction of the natural environment of an area and the practices of its farmers. In this paper, farmers' practices are examined in order to describe and understand processes of landscape change in terraced fields on the island of Lesvos, Greece. We examine the changes of the terraced fields of each farmer and the reasons for these changes, practices concerning the maintenance of terraces and how farmers view this landscape change. The concept of farming systems is used to link farmers' practices at the farm level with changes at the landscape level. Data come from research via questionnaires to farmers in order to record their practices, to explore changes in land use and the landscape elements and the reasons behind these changes, and finally to record their opinions on the landscape change that result. Findings indicate that although farm households in the case study areas depend on farming incomes by very different degrees, they employ similar cultivation and landscape management practices. At the same time, "hobby" farm households may be more prone to abandonment of fields and negligence of landscape elements (here terraces)

A Survey of Academic Approaches to Agrarian Transformation in Post-War Greece

Discussed here are the interpretations of agrarian transformation in Greece during the post-war period. These are divided roughly into developmentalist, populist and ethnographic arguments. Emphasis is placed on the necessity of an interdisciplinary method in order to understand patterns of rural change, without attributing a determining role either to a political economy perspective or to an a-historical concept of community. Using the example of ethnohistory, this survey argues for an effective comparative ethnography of rural change, thereby overcoming the usual distinction between macro and micro-analysis