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Greece’s most famous agricultural product is its treasured olive oil that’s among the world’s best if under marketed and sold in bulk to other countries, but some farmers are growing crops associated with tropical climates.
On his farm in Kyparissia on the western Peloponnese, Panos Adamopoulos is trying his hand at mangoes, the national stone fruit of India, Pakistan and the Philippines, and which originated in Myanmar.
Adamopoulos said he’s turning to mangoes because of climate change that has affected agriculture in Greece, especially olive trees, but as well as watermelon and other crops taking a hit because of a change in temperatures and precipitation.
After the warmest winter on record, Greece also experienced the hottest June and July since reliable data collection began in 1960, said Agence France-Presse in a feature on farmers looking for other crops.
“There is no winter,” Adamopoulos, told the news agency, adding that his property had not received a drop of rain since March. “No water, no cultivation,” said Adamopoulos, whose trees seem to grow right into the Ionian Sea.
For now, most of Adamopoulos’ income currently comes from iceberg lettuce but he said as Greece has become hotter and more arid he may have to give up on produce that requires a lot of water, such as watermelons.
He is among a small number of Greek growers turning to tropical fruits also including avocados, lychees, cherimoya and macadamia nuts that he said are “more resistant” to the increasingly intense heat in the Mediterranean region.
For now, he only grows a few dozen mango and avocado trees on his 80-hectare (198-acre) estate but he said the exotic fruits are adapting so well that he plans to plant a further 300 trees and already has orders for the mangoes.
CROPUCOPIA
The initiative is part of a study by Greek state agriculture institute Demeter to determine whether tropical fruits could help deal with drought and the climate that has become intolerable in the summer for people, and plants.
Study supervisor Teresa Tzatzani said the point is to “find new ways to face this climate change, and make it work in our favor. It is hotter all year round now, and this is good for these crops,” she said.
While avocado grows on the island of Crete, scientists were unsure whether the tree would adapt to conditions on the Greek mainland, the report said, adding that mango trees need very little rainfall but there’s been almost none in two winters.
Switching to tropical crops could save the agricultural from future climate disasters, said Antonis Paraskevopoulos, head of agriculture for the local region of Triphylia, cautioning that they are not a miracle solution.
The program for now only has about a dozen farmers with just 10 hectares (24.75 acres) in cultivation as a kind of trial experiment in a country where the olive tree is king and olive oil the national product.
Mangoes and tropical fruit won’t replace olive trees or other crops that have been grown for centuries, including oranges, said said Tzatzani, who plans to extend the experiment to other Greek regions.
Theodoros Dimitrakakis, another Greek farmer in the initiative, estimates that it will take years for tropical fruit production to become profitable in Greece and says he can’t put all his time and hopes into it, needing to tend to his olive trees.
Because of reduced water availability he said that in 2023 his olive yield was 60 percent below average. He was an environmental activist while in college and said he now realizes the impact of climate change and that he hopes to convince other farmers who think the problem is just “a bad year.”
