``Erst Kommt das Fressen’’: The Neoliberal Restructuring of Agriculture and Food in Greece

Charalampos Konstantinidis

No 2016_02, Working Papers from University of Massachusetts Boston, Economics Department

Abstract: While public debt has become the focal point of discussions of the Greek crisis, the Greek crisis has been used as an opportunity to extend a series of neoliberal reforms. I examine the agricultural and food sector of Greece since 1981 and I show how Greece’s integration into the European market, following Greece’s entry in the European Economic Community led to (a) the dismantling of agricultural and food production in Greece and (b) the increased power of intermediate actors in the Greek food system. I argue that a series of grassroots responses, including solidarity initiatives and direct consumer-farmer interactions, offer insight into a strategy of food sovereignty to help rebuild productive capacity in agriculture and address food insecurity. However, the three structural adjustment programs implemented in Greece after 2010 undermined these responses, by furthering the liberalization of Greek agriculture and the centralization of the food sector. Finally I argue that recent lender intervention into governance, and particularly lender veto-power over all proposed legislation introduced by the third Structural Adjustment Program of 2015, poses additional challenges for strategies aiming at food sovereignty.

Keywords: food; agriculture; Greece; political economy; European Union; neoliberalism (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: B5 O52 Q18 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 25 pages
Date: 2016-02
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-agr and nep-hme
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