Assessing the competitiveness and viability of tobacco in Greece and the potentials for further expansion

Konstadinos Mattas, Efstratios Loizou and Anastasios Michailidis

No 305577, Working Papers from Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Department of Agricultural Economics

Abstract: One of the most traditional and significant crops in the Greek agriculture economy, is Tobacco. Tobacco is of great significance, contributing to regional economy development, particularly in areas characterized as semi-mountainous with less fertile soils. Tobacco supports farm incomes and rural employment, and at the same time, offers various direct and indirect revenues to related activities around the tobacco cultivation and processing. The cultivation of tobacco the last decade was almost abandoned causing devastating disarray in the tobacco areas, after the CAP decision to introduce decoupled payments and disconnect subsidies from production. The CAP change induced irreversible and devastating effects on the development of several rural and less developed regions. Thousands of farmers stop cultivating tobacco and several processing industries ceased their activities, inducing the loss of many jobs and earnings, to farmers, workers, and the economy. Within this context, the current study aims to examine issues related to tobacco cultivation perspectives and future trends as Processing industries are interested to expand their activities and invest in new innovations. Processing industries are interested to know whether farmers are willing to stay in the specific tobacco areas and continue cultivating tobacco, in order to proceed to further investments, mainly regarding harvesting cost, which is very high in oriental type varieties. Specifically, the study aims to examine tobacco's viability and perspective (Basma and Katerini varieties) in Greece, through the following aims: 1. to present a review outlook of the tobacco cultivation, 2. to identify the areas that oriental type tobacco is concentrated and is suitable for cultivation and expansion, 3. to perform qualitative research, addressed to local farmers and stakeholders by field trips in the dominant areas (Komotini/Xanthi, Serres/Drama, and Katerini/Elassona), 4. to present a comparison of tobacco production with other competitive crops through cost analysis, and 5. to identify with a quantitative analysis the views of tobacco farmers regarding the willingness to continue the cultivation, taking into consideration issues such as the introduction of mechanical cultivation and harvesting.

Keywords: Agricultural and Food Policy; Farm Management (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 103
Date: 2018-06-01
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ags:grauwp:305577

DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.305577

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