The government’s plan has led to the reduced resources of the new CAP, while it also plans to introduce cheap labour
Another attempt to transfer responsibility to external factors. Another attempt to cover up the responsibilities of Kyriakos Mitsotakis towards the survival struggle of the farmers who last week came to the Syntagma with their tractors. The new Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) is to blame for everything, says the government narrative, in an attempt to absolve the prime minister of his heavy responsibilities. As for the cost of living crisis imposed on Greece from 2021 and everyone attributes it to profiteering inflation, the Mitsotakis narrative is that Putin is to blame for invading Ukraine.
Indeed, the dominant demand of the protesting farmers is to change the new CAP. That’s where the main problem lies. But it concerns what Greece did from 2019, when Mr. Mitsotakis took over, until 17.10.22, when Greece’s strategic plan for the CAP 2023-27 was submitted (finally approved on 21.11.22). The suffocation of farmers, which has already inconceivably increased to 13% the average rate of abandonment both in number of producers and in arable land, in addition to floods, and the cost of electricity and liquid fuels (all reflecting Mitsotakis’ responsibilities) are precisely due to this strategic plan.
It sets up oligopolies
The “gospel” of Mitsotakis, the conclusion of the Pissarides committee, that is, until today has not had much application in the primary sector as the oligopolies had not entered, leaving room for the peasantry. The proposed Pissaridis mix, the policy of “cheap growth”, which favors low labor costs with low tax rates so that growth can come through the automation of a market free from government regulation, ignores human resources, which may be malnourished or have no rights – can be achieved by cumulatively introducing cheap hands that do not claim.
This is exactly what is happening in the Greek countryside and has been recorded in a study by the former Secretary General of Private Investments of the Ministry of Economy and Development Lois Lambrianidis for the ENA Institute. “The combination of the limitation of the labor force (due to demographic crisis) and the domestic agricultural smallholding and the domestic agricultural labor force, with the annual influx of land workers, will intensify the tendencies of concentration of land in the hands of the few who will rely mainly on the profits from overexploitation of cheap labor and not in the technological and quality upgrading of agriculture, because the supply of cheap unskilled labor is a clear disincentive to quality upgrading” it says.
CAP as a loop
The Mitsotakis government from 2019 to 2022 that finally submitted the approved strategic plan chose the blur. Zero information to the producers about what he was bringing to the production. All that was approved by the community bodies that concern Greece and have now taken the farmers to the streets constitute the Mitsotakis strategic plan to destroy small ownership, through what he requested to be approved for Greece in the CAP 2023-27.
Therefore, compared to the previous program period (2014-20), the first pillar of the CAP for Greece shows a negative change (-1.9%) while the resources in the second pillar are significantly strengthened (4.6%) thanks to the contribution of Recovery Fund, while the overall financing of the CAP shows a small negative change compared to the previous period (-0.5%).
Are these small reductions destroying Greek agricultural production? The answer is obviously no. The loop entered the second level, which concerns funding by sector. Specifically in the special support for cotton, where the amount of support in Greece from €234.18 per hectare of eligible area for each year of the 2014-20 programming period was limited to €229.37 per hectare during the period 2023-27, a change that with the current yield (3.2 tonnes/ha) and the eligible crop area (250,000 ha) limits the support to €183.5 million per year, a size reduced by €3.8 million compared to the annual support during the period 2014-20 (€187.3 million).
A limitation was also noted in the financing of the olive oil and table olives sector in Greece. The amount of annual support was reduced from €11,098 million in the previous programming period to €10,666 million in the two-year transitional period (ie for the years 2021 and 2022), representing a decrease of 3.9%. In addition, if we take into account the financial tables of the published and approved strategic plan of the CAP concerning the financing of the programs in question for the entire period 2023-27 (€47,514 million), the losses at the level of comparison between the two program periods ( 2014-20 and 2021-27) amount to €8.84 million (-12.8%).
Resources for the few
Even the reduced resources are directed to the “big players” so that in the third level the small ones are destroyed. What prevails in the strategic plan of Greece approved by the Community institutions is the uneven distribution of direct aid, as 10% of farms collect 48% of direct aid, while 45% of farms that can be considered small farms receive 10% of direct aid. All these have been integrated into the new CAP 2023-27 and constitute Greece’s strategic plan for agricultural and livestock production. Everything that the farmers are experiencing now has the stamp of Mr. Mitsotakis, who once again appears as irresponsible while bearing full responsibility for what Greek society is experiencing.
See also: Farmers in Messolonghi: They threw manure at the District building (Videos)
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Farmers: The tractors return to Brussels for the EU Council of Agriculture Ministers
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