Liz Truss, the new UK prime minister, isn’t a fan of solar farms. In 2014, when she was environment secretary, she described rows of panels arranged in a field to capture energy from the sun as a “blight on the landscape”. Eight years later, as a candidate for the 2022 Conservative Party leadership election, she…
Promoting rural development is essential for the general economic transformation of people, hence requiring great attention from different government systems. This study assessed the risk, vulnerability, and resilience of agriculture, as well as its impact on sustainable rural economy development, using Greece as the case study. The study employed a quantitative research approach based on…
Farming systems in marginal or less favored areas of Europe have faced a multitude of challenges as a response to so-called “mega-trends”. A typical response has been land abandonment. The focus of this paper is on the farming systems of the Greek islands of Lesvos and Lemnos. These neighboring islands are geographically very similar but…
In the past decades, agricultural landscapes have simplified with crop specialization and the reduction of seminatural covers leading to a decline of biodiversity and (biodiversity-driven) ecosystem services. This study measures the impact of landscape agrobiodiversity on the economy of southern Europe. The analysis relies on regression analyses to measure the effect of agrobiodiversity on the…
To support sustainable food production and the delivery of ecosystem services through ecological intensification, wildflower strips have become a popular strategy. Despite their success in temperate orchard systems, they remain understudied in Mediterranean ecosystems, which poses a significant barrier to uptake. In order to further promote their adoption, seed mixes must be optimised for commercial…
Although the negative effects of insecticides and herbicides on beneficial and non-target invertebrates are well documented, there is limited information on potential negative impacts of pest and weed management practices used in organic farming on invertebrate activity. Using established field experiments designed to compare different ground cover crops (used to suppress weeds and increase nitrogen…
The Mediterranean Basin is evolving due to human – nature interactions. The management of agroecosystems strongly affects plant diversity. Olive groves cover 19% of the cultivated area in Greece of which 8% is organic, cultivated using environment-friendly farming practices, while the rest includes conventional (intensive) or abandoned olive groves. Lesbos, the third largest island of…
Historical evidence concerning the island of Lesvos has revealed the cultivation of cereals, olive trees, vines, figs and vegetables. Although the island’s agricultural economy has been based almost exclusively on olive tree cultivation since the 18th century (ce.), wide diversity of other crops has significantly contributed … >>> Douma, C., Koutis, K., Thanopoulos, R., Tsigou,…
In semi-arid areas of the Mediterranean basin, sheep and goat herding has been a land management activity for millennia. In the last decades, intensification of grazing has resulted in grazing land degradation. Today, many sheep farms face growing dependence from feed to cover the dietary needs of animals, as grazing land productivity covers only a…
Greece is well used to visitors, whether they are those who come to enjoy a few weeks of sunshine or explore its natural or man-made attractions, or those who are looking for a way to escape from hardships closer to their home and see Greece as a stepping stone to a brighter future. Those in…