Isabella Gidarakou

Young women farm heads in Greek agriculture: entering farming through policy incentives

Abstract This work examines the entry of young Greek women into farming as heads of farmholdings under the relevant EU and national framework of incentives. The work is based on the analysis of available secondary information and mail-survey data secured from a sample of 128 young women established in farming during the period 1991–2000 in the region of Thessaly, Central Greece. Their responses to the system of incentives are examined initially as a whole group and then separately by focusing on two typological polar opposites, that is those women that are entering farming as a lifestyle and those entering for reasons of necessity. There is documentation of young women farmers’ use of the incentives and benefits derived there from and their assumption of a certain share in the decision-making power vis-a-vis their farmholding, the last-mentioned especially when the two typological groups are considered.

Tracking empowerment and participation of young women farmers in Greece

The present study investigates the contribution to farm womens empowerment of the ‘young farmers’ programme that has been run by the Greek state since the early 1990s. The ‘young farmers’ programme aims to attract young people (men as well as women) into agriculture in order to renew the aged farming population, providing economic incentives to young people (up to 40 years old) entering farming or to newly established young farmers. The programme is based on Chap. II, article 8, Reg. 1257/99 (and the previous structural regulations) and operates through the Community Support Frameworks implemented by the Ministry of Rural Development and Food. The Ministry also provides a number of supplementary national incentives to young people wishing to become established in agriculture (Law 2520/97).

Young Women and Agriculture

The ‘young farmers’ EU programme, managed in Greece by the Ministry of Rural Development & Food, aims at improving the age structure in rural areas, attracting young people (up to 40 years old) to agriculture and, finally, retaining young people in rural areas. Within the framework of a wider research project concerning young women farmers in the West Macedonia region, Greece, despite a general trend indicating that young women entered the ‘young farmers’ programme as farm managers, but do not actually overcome the traditional role as farmer wives or daughters, a nucleus of young women active in agriculture and with a positive attitude towards farming is also found. The present study focuses on this latter category of young women. Data were collected through a survey and, primarily, in-depth interviews. Their occupational trajectories since the time they finished school, their entrance into and role in farming, their participation in collective bodies as well as their attitude towards the ‘young farmers’ programme as related to gender, are all presented and discussed. Despite the fact that these women joined the programme due to family strategies (in order not to lose a funding opportunity), they actively seized the opportunity. The present study showed that the ‘young farmers’ programme helped these few women to utilise the incentives in order to become professional farmers.

Agritourism in Opposition to Agriculture? : Two Greek Case-Studies.

Agritourism has been a component of the EU, and therefore of the Greek policy for the development of the countryside since the mid-1980s. Agritourism was initially meant to function as an alternative means towards the improvement of farm structures and, through the obtainment of supplementary income, to enhance farm succession rates as well as the prospects of rural populations to stay in their native communities (e.g. EEC, Reg. 797/85). This strategy was subsequently differentiated along with the emergence of concepts such as integrated (and sustainable) rural development, endogenous development and multifunctionality which, in turn, transformed the development rationale. The Community Initiative LEADER pioneered in the implementation of projects incorporating the new rationale and thus opened up the opportunities for non-farmers and non-residents of the target areas to access the available financial assistance in order to establish agritourism related businesses (Koutsouris & hatzantonis, 2002). In the Greek case, the fragmentation of the responsibility for the implementation of such a rationale (e.g. Giagou, 2000) resulted in the financing of such businesses via multiple programmes without either coordination, a clear definition of the ‘product’ or a certain legal framework. A consequence of such a trajectory, in Greece, has been the lack of any systematic register of agritourism related businesses and their owners which would allow for the thorough exploration of the ‘agritourism