ΣΗΜΕΡΑ ΕΜΕΙΣ ΑYΡΙΟ ΕΣΕΙΣ

The powerful head of the Orthodox church in Cyprus recommended his country prepare to abandon the euro as talks on an EU bailout came down to the wire.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=JMf_KwQ2Xlk

Archbishop Chrysostomos II endorsed the position, increasingly popular inside Cyprus, alongside an appeal to Russian investors to continue banking with the island despite the threat of a government raid on their deposits.

“The euro cannot last,” Chrysostomos told Realnews, a Greek newspaper. “I’m not saying that it will crumble tomorrow, but with the brains that they have in Brussels, it is certain that it will not last in the long term, and the best is to think about how to escape it.

“It’s not easy, but we should devote as much time to this as was spent on entering the eurozone.”

Anger with the European Union has been steadily growing as Cypriots blame Brussels for failing to agree the bailout needed to save the country from financial collapse.

The archbishop’s comments carry considerable weight on the island, and not just because of his religious position. More than just a spiritual haven for Cypriots, the Orthodox church is the country’s biggest landowner and a major investor in everything from hotels and construction to a brewery. It also holds a majority stake in Hellenic Bank, Cyprus’s third biggest.

Last week, the church said it was prepared to mortgage its properties in order to contribute to saving the island’s struggling economy.

Chrysostomos said in a second interview, published on Sunday, that he would appeal to rich Russian investors not to flee the island. A proposed levy on accounts over €100,000, designed to contribute to underpinning of a tranche of the bailout worth €5.8bn (£4.95bn), would hit foreign investors particularly hard. Russians are believed to hold nearly half of all deposits in Cypriot banks.

An estimated 50,000 Russians live on the island, taking advantage of its favourable financial infrastructure as well as close cultural ties between the two countries. Most people in Russia and Cyprus are Orthodox believers.

Chrysostomos said he would host a dinner on Thursday for the heads of Russian businesses active in Cyprus in an effort to convince them to remain on the island despite the growing uncertainty, the Greek newspaper Kathimerini reported on Sunday. “He went on to say that Cypriot people have got used to living comfortably, and should now learn to live on tighter budgets as well,” the newspaper reported.

Former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi revealed on Sunday that he has tried to buy a Greek island.

The billionaire, who is a candidate in the current Italian election race, said that he had spoken to former Prime Minister George Papandreou and current Premier Antonis Samaras about acquiring a Greek islet.

The billionaire told reporters of his plans before casting his ballot and mistakenly referred to Papandreou as “Papadopoulos” before being corrected.

“I told Papandreou that if there is a nice island which I could buy, he should let me know,” he said, adding that prices of real estate had dropped as a result of the economic crisis.

“I also told Samaras that I wanted to buy an island,” added Berlusconi.

The government passed a law last week that allows islands to be leased, not sold, to investors and only if the transaction has the approval of the Defense Ministry.

Source: ekathimerini.com

With his red beanie hat and rickety three-wheeler, 56-year-old Dimitris cuts an unlikely figure as he dives head-first into the garbage to scour for scrap in Athens’s wealthy suburbs.

The unemployed builder is one of the few Greeks to defy taboos by becoming a scrap dealer in a country where the job is considered the lowly domain of illegal migrants.

But Dimitris, who worked on construction sites for 42 years before losing his job, has grown proud of a trade he turned to as a last resort to make ends meet during Greece’s worst economic crisis in decades. And he learned it can pay well too.

“In the beginning I used hoods and scarves to cover my face. I didn’t want people recognizing me. I was ashamed,” he said, declining to give his last name because much of the scrap trade is done informally and off the books.

“It was difficult but I got into the spirit of things. What else can you do when there’s no work?”

About half of the country’s construction workers have lost their jobs since 2007 as demand for new homes collapsed amid the crisis, and debt-laden Greece’s unemployment rate is the highest in the European Union.

Unlike the dozens of poor, usually African or Asian migrant scrap hunters spotted in rundown areas balancing supermarket trolleys stacked with metal, plastic and paper, Dimitris ventures to posh neighborhoods where surprised residents at times even call him in to hand over used items.

Though it’s an open secret that money made in the scrap business is rarely declared, he says he has never run into trouble with the police, who have detained thousands of migrants doing similar work as part of sweeps that began in August.

“Being Greek is definitely an advantage and my neighbors tell me: good for you, we commend you!” he said.

Clad in jeans and a loose-fitting jacket, the white-haired father of two is now a familiar face to shopkeepers in his working-class neighborhood, who hand over disused radiators and air conditioners.

Over at the weigh station — an old warehouse covered wall to wall with tall piles of glossy magazines, dismantled laptops and vacuum cleaners — dealers divide up the findings and offer Dimitris anything from 10 euros to 200 euros ($13.53-$270) in cash for a day’s work.

That is enough to get by on for now, but Dimitris worries about the future of his children — a 26-year-old unemployed son and a daughter who will soon complete high school — and others facing Greece’s impossible job market.

At least some of them could try collecting scrap despite the stigma, he says.

“Rather than sitting around in cafes all day the youth could give this a shot,” he said. “People laugh but you can make a decent day’s work from trash. We lost our dignity (during the crisis) but we can still try to make a decent living.” [Reuters]

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I remember as a child growing up watching the news and listening to Melina Mercouri talking about her love for Greece and her passion and determination for the Parthenon Marbles to be returned to their rightful place where they always belonged. I don’t think she was ever bitter in the manner they were taken when Lord Elgin controversially removed them, but she just wanted them back with all her heart and all her soul and this was what she was fought for until her last breath.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=B6Ca21dCmhI

It was her dream, and she always believed that she would see the day when the Marbles would once again come back to Athens. I still remember the passion and the love she had for them in her eyes, and when she talked about them you could feel that it was heartfelt. She didn’t cry but you felt that her heart was crying and these are memories that I have as a child and they will always stay with me.

Melina Mercouri is one of the great women figures of Greece in the 20th century. A many-sided and vibrant personality, she played a leading role in the struggle against the Colonel’s Junta in 1967 -- 1974 and was a great theatre and film actress of international fame. The parts she has portrayed have made cinema history. She was also a politician who left her mark on Greek culture.

Melina (the diminutive of her two names Amalia -- Maria) Mercouri was born in Athens on 18 October 1920. She comes from a family of politicians and was the beloved grand daughter of Spyros Mercouris -- one of the most successful and popular mayors of Athens, for more than 30 years -- and the daughter of Stamatis Mercouris, a deputy of EDA (Party of the Greek Democratic Left) former Minister of Public Order and Public Works. A little after she had completed her secondary education, she was admitted to the National Theatre’s Drama School after reciting a poem by Karyotakis. She studied with the great teacher Dimitris Rondiris and graduated in 1944. She joined the National Theatre and interpreted small parts on the central stage and on the Piraeus stage.

I have carried this memory of Melina Mercouri with me and I now feel this is the time to do my little bit for her, which is to fulfill her dream and indeed my dream. Melina Mercouri’s last wish went: ‘MY SOLE WILL NEVER REST UNTIL THE PARTHENON MARBLES RETURN TO THEIR ORIGINAL BIRTHPLACE’. These are very powerful words coming from a person who was extremely passionate about her quest to have the Parthenon Marbles returned.

Before Melina Mercuri became the Minister of Culture, she was an actress and a very good one I believe. Her first movie was the Greek Language film ‘Stella’ (1955), directed by Michael Cacoyannis, the director of ‘Zorba the Greek’. The film received special praise at the 1951 Cannes Festival, where she met for first time the American film director Jules Dassin, with whom she would later share her life, as they got married in 1966. The following year she starred in the film ‘He Who Must Die’ and another Dassin’s film followed featuring Mercouri, such as ‘The Law’ (1959).

She became well known to international audiences when she starred in ‘Never on Sunday’ (1960) in which Dassin was the director and co-star. For this film, Mercouri received the Best Actress Award at the 1960 Cannes Film Festival and was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress and the BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role.

After her first major international success, she went on to star in Phaedra (1962), for which she was nominated again for the BAFTA Award and the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in Motion Picture Drama. The recognition of her acting talent did not stop though, as her role in ‘Topkapi’ (1964) granted her one more nomination, this time for the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in Motion Picture Musical or Comedy. Mercouri worked with other famous directors as well, such as Joseph Losey, Vittorio De Sica, Ronald Neame, Carl Foreman, Norman Jewison, and starred in films like ‘Spanish Language the Uninhibited’ by Juan Antonio Bardem. She continued her stage career in the Greek production of Tennessee Williams Sweet Bird of Youth (1960), under the direction of Karolos Koun. In 1967, she played the leading role in Illya Darling at Broadway, for which she was nominated for the Tony Award for Best Performance by a Leading Actress in a Musical, while her performance in Promise at Dawn (1970) gave her another Golden Globe Award nomination.

Melina Mercouri concentrated on her stage career for the following years, playing in the Greek productions of ‘The Threepenny Opera’ and, for a second time, ‘Sweet Bird of Youth’, in addition to the ancient Greek tragedies ‘Medea’ and ‘Oresteia’. She retired from film acting in 1978, when she played in her last film, ‘A Dream of Passion’, directed by her husband Jules Dassin. Her last performance on stage was in the opera ‘Pylades’ at the Athens Concert Hall in 1992, portraying Clytemnestra.

In the October 1981 elections, Melina Mercouri was appointed Minister of Culture, a post she would keep for the whole 8 years of the Pan Hellenic Socialist Party (PASOK) government, the first Minister of Culture in Greece to remain in office for so long. Amongst her wide-ranging activities at the Ministry of Culture Melina Mercouri:

- Started the campaign for the return of the Parthenon Marbles presently in the British Museum. At the same time, she gave special attention to the restoration of the Acropolis monuments and held an international competition for the design of the New Acropolis Museum.

- She commissioned a study for the integration of all the archaeological sites of Athens, i.e. the integration of Athens’ historic center at Iera Odos -- Plaka -- Temple of Olympian Zeus triangle, so as to create a 4 km archaeological park, a pedestrianised area free from traffic where residents and visitors could learn and enjoy the history of Athens.

- She introduced free access to museums and archaeological sites for Greek citizens as part of an overall education effort aimed at the people, youth in particular.

- She organized a series of impressive exhibitions of Greek cultural heritage and contemporary Greek art in all five continents.

- She gave priority to the protection of Greece’s recent architectural heritage, supporting the restoration of important buildings throughout the country and especially in Athens (Schlieman Mansion -- Weiler building).

- She gave full support to the completion of the Athens Hall of Music (Megaron Mousikis Athinon). She bought and commissioned the reconstruction of the REX building.

- In 1989, she backed the Thessaloniki Byzantine Museum project; the largest Greek museum built in Greece in the 20th century.

- She was one of the devoted supporters of the Athens bid for the 1996 Olympics to commemorate the centennial of the first Modern Olympic Games of 1896.

- In 1983, during the first Greek presidency, she invited the Culture Ministers of the ten European Union Member States, at the time, at an informal meeting in Zappeion where she asked them to participate in a joint action to increase the people’s cultural awareness, since there was no reference to cultural questions in the Treaty of Rome. So, on her initiative the sessions of the EEC Ministers of Culture were established.

- One of her greatest achievements as Minister of Culture was the establishment of the institution of the Cultural Capitals of Europe, with Athens being chosen as the first capital in 1985.

- A fruitful and constructive dialogue with the countries of Eastern Europe began on her initiative when in 1988, during the second Greek presidency, she supported the idea of a cooperation between Eastern Europe and the European Union and tried to open up the borders despite the strong reservations of her European partners. The idea was implemented in 1989 with the celebration of the Month of Culture in Eastern countries.

Melina Mercouri died in March 6, 1994, at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Centre, New York City, from lung cancer, aged 73. She was survived by her husband, Jules Dassin. She received a state funeral with Prime Minister’s honors at the First Cemetery of Athens four days later. Thousands attended her funeral.

But more important to Melina Mercouri was that the love she had for the Greek people was returned to her and that her memory is revered and cherished by all

For many years, the Greek Government has been demanding the return of the marbles, wanting to restore a central part of its architectural and cultural heritage. I want to personally continue Melina Mercouri’s quest. I can only believe in my heart as she did, that one day The Parthenon Marbles will return to their birthplace.

Source: Greece4life.com

A huge cloud of dust covers the sun, shrouding the Earth in darkness for days, weeks, months. What happened? A massive asteroid crash. Everything has changed in the year 2262, and the explosion of the asteroid has razed 11,500 kilometers of forestland. How does the crash affect the global climate and affect life forms on the planet?

The Eugenides Foundation’s new interactive science and technology exhibition aims to answer these questions and more by presenting a series of scenarios narrating the destruction of the Earth and providing scientific explanations not just as to their causes, but their implications as well.

The exhibition, which runs to December 16, has been compiled by experts and is open to the public every Saturday and Sunday.

At 1.30 p.m. on both days, organizers present a series of experiments aimed at people aged 9 and above (adults are welcome) that show the effect of various natural disasters such as an asteroid’s impact on the Earth and life on it.

In the hypothetical asteroid crash scenario, for example, the survivors face a number of challenges.

“We explain the effect on the global climate that the impact of a large asteroid would have, and the important environmental role played by plants,” Leda Arnellou, who is in charge of the interactive exhibition, told Kathimerini. “This helps children understand the importance of oxygen, but also of carbon dioxide, for living organisms. The exhibition then travels back to the present day and explains how human activities have an impact on climate change that is not very different from an asteroid.”

The exhibition is organized to show a destruction scenario in the first phase, and then addresses the issue of depletion of natural resources, which in turn leads to a discussion on the destruction of the planet’s natural environment. The sessions also include workshops on recycling, held at 3 p.m., in which children aged 8 and above make their own paper, helping them understand how paper can be reused in order to halt the depletion of forests.

“The aim is to help them understand the concept of sustainability and the dangers of natural resource depletion,” Arnellou said.

The next session, which begins at 5.30 p.m. and is aimed at children aged over 12, is centered on interactive narratives of ancient doomsday prophecies, from Scandinavian legends and the writings of Nostradamus to the Mayan prophecies that see the end of the world coming on December 21, 2012.

“We talk about the destruction of Pompeii in AD 79, as well as the eruption of the Santorini volcano in 1613 BC,” explained Arnellou.

The third session of the day in centered on a discussion of modern-day disasters that have posed a threat to the Earth’s natural balance, such as the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami in Japan that caused massive damage to the nuclear power plant in Fukushima.

The next interactive exhibition at the Eugenides Foundation, which will run from mid-December through May, will focus on the evolution of technology from antiquity to the present, including Heron of Alexandria’s windmill, space travel and exploration for life on other planets.

Eugenides Foundation, 387 Syngrou Avenue, Palaio Faliro, tel 210.946.9600

Source:  ekathimerini.com

HOW IT BEGAN

In mid-August 2009 the photographer and composer Ares Kalogeropoulos visited the British Museum in the city of London in Great Britain. Entering and passing through countless Greek rooms in the museum he saw something that inspired awe in him but also caused him great pain. Awe at the infinite beauty of the Classical Greek works, and pain that these items were all so far from the mother earth that had given birth to them. Room 18, named by the British as the Parthenon Room was what made him take out his camera and start capturing evidence of the most heinous of cultural crimes to be perpetrated in recent history: the sacrilegious defilement of the greatest monument and symbol of world culture, and the illegal retention in a foreign place of 65% of the artifacts that had decorated it. Far from the sun and sky of Athens. Broken, humiliated and above all, HALF of the monument. Pieces of the Parthenon, which has stood there in Athens for thousands of years, now fixed and hanging without any meaning at all.

This photographic archive remained in his computer until the middle of February of 2012 when it came to light because of an internal desire of the artist to express himself by making known this cultural crime to the world.

THE MOVEMENT

The first photograph was uploaded to Ares Kalogeropoulos Facebook profile in February of 2012. This photo was followed by many others that were posted daily to the profile and were then broadcast by thousands of people at an impressive and stunningly increasing rate.

There was only one message and it was clear:

“I AM GREEK AND I WANT TO GO HOME”.

It may have started as a personal expression of the artist seeking justice by projecting such an historically important cultural problem but public support through postings and actions turned it into a movement.

Ares Kalogeropoulos.

www.iamgreek.gr

Colonialism is back. Well, at least according to leading politicians of the two most famous debtor nations. Commenting on the EU’s inability to deliver its end of the bargain despite the savage spending cuts Greece had delivered, Alexis Tsipras, the leader of the opposition Syriza party, said last week that his country was becoming a “debt colony”. A couple of days later, Hernán Lorenzino, Argentina’s economy minister, used the term “judicial colonialism” to denounce the US court ruling that his country has to pay in full a group of “vulture funds” that had held out from the debt restructuring that followed the country’s 2002 default.

While their language was deliberately incendiary, these two politicians were making extremely important points. Tsipras was asking why most burdens of adjustment for bad loans have to fall on the debtor country and, within them, mostly on its weaker members. And he is right. As they say, it takes two to tango, so those who condemn Greece for imprudent borrowing should also condemn the imprudent lenders that made it possible.

Lorenzino was asking how we can let one court ruling in a foreign country in favour of one small group of creditors (who bought the debt in the secondary market) derail a painfully engineered process of national recovery. The absurdity of this situation becomes clear when we recall that, partly thanks to the default and subsequent debt restructuring, Argentina, expanding at close to 7% per year, has been the fastest growing Latin American economy between 2003 and 2011.

But there is far more at stake here than the national welfares of Greece and Argentina, important though they are. The Greek debt problem has dragged down not just Greece but the whole eurozone, and with it the world economy. Had the Greek debt been quickly reduced to a manageable level through restructuring, the eurozone would be in a much better shape today. In the Argentinian case, we are risking not just an end to Argentina’s recovery but a fresh round of turmoil in the global financial market because of one questionable US court ruling.

Many people argue that, regrettable as they may be, such situations are unavoidable. However, when it comes to debt problems within our borders, we actually don’t let the same situation develop. All national bankruptcy laws allow companies with too big a debt problem to declare themselves bankrupt. Once bankruptcy is declared, the debtor company and its creditors are forced to work together to reorganise the company’s affairs, under clear rules.

First, a standstill is imposed on debt repayments – for as long as six months in the case of the debtor-friendly American bankruptcy law. Second, subject to the majority (or in some countries a super-majority of two thirds) of them agreeing, creditors are required to accept a debt reduction programme in return for a new company management strategy. This programme could involve outright reduction (or even cancellation) of debts, lowering of interest rates, and extension of the repayment period. Third, lawsuits by individual creditors are banned until there is an agreement, so that individual creditors cannot disrupt the restructuring process. Fourth, the claims of other stakeholders on the company are also taken into account, with wages being typically given “seniority” over debts.

Unfortunately, no mechanism like this exists for countries, which is what has made sovereign debt crises so difficult to manage. Because they don’t have any legal protection from creditors in times of trouble, countries typically postpone the necessary restructuring of their economies by piling on more debts in the (usually unfulfilled) hope that the situation will somehow resolve itself. This makes the debt problem bigger than necessary.

What’s more, because they cannot officially go bankrupt, countries face a stark choice. Either they default and risk exclusion in the international financial market (although countries can overcome it quickly, as Russia and Malaysia did in the late 1990s) or they have to opt for a de facto default, in which they pretend that they have not defaulted by making full repayments on their existing loans with money borrowed from public bodies, like the International Monetary Fund and the EU, while trying to negotiate debt restructuring.

The problem with this solution is that, in the absence of clear rules, the debt renegotiation process becomes lengthy, and can push the economy into a downward spiral. We have seen this in many Latin American countries in the 1980s, and we are seeing it today in Greece and other eurozone periphery economies.

Meanwhile, the absence of rules equivalent to the protection of wage claims in corporate bankruptcy law means that claims by weaker stakeholders – pensions, unemployment insurance, income supports – are the first to go. This creates social unrest, which then threatens recovery by discouraging investment.

It is not because people condoned defaulting per se that they came to introduce the corporate bankruptcy law. It was because they recognised that in the long run, creditors – and the broader economy, too – are likely to benefit more from reducing the debt burdens of companies in trouble, so that they can get a fresh start, than by letting them disintegrate in a disorderly way.

It is high time that we applied the same principles to countries and introduced a sovereign bankruptcy law.

Source:  guardian.co.uk

The Greeks never used to have hero issues. But heroes have been in short supply in the country’s hour of need, which could explain the rush to cinemas to spend time in the company of an 18th-century pirate turned luxury foodstuffs tycoon. Recent release O Theos agapaei to haviari (God Loves Caviar) is the story of Ioannis Varvakis, an Enlightenment-era rapscallion who sided with the Russians in their 1768 war with the Turks, befriended Catherine the Great and built a fortune out of sturgeon eggs – then gave it all away to help his motherland fight the Ottoman empire. It’s not exactly all-action Pirates of the Aegean; with Catherine Deneuve as Catherine, John Cleese as an English colonial officer and The Lives of Others star Sebastian Koch as Varvakis, this is one high-seas jolly fishing for a more upmarket kind of international harbour.

It’s done the trick in Greece, topping the box office for three weeks in October and taking $2.7m (£1.7m) to date, making it the year’s highest-grossing domestic film. The tale of an Odyssean rogue making good in stormy times has struck a national chord; it seems to have made no difference whatsoever that the film, directed by Yannis Smaragdis (who after his 2007 biopic of El Greco seems to be monopolising the Hellenic-icon market), has come in for a rough critical ride. “Turgid, awkward and as insincere as they come,” wrote IonCinema’s Nicholas Bell after the film screened at Toronto earlier this year. “This historical melodrama is one painfully orchestrated scene after the other.”

Greek criticisms were more focused. Giannis Zoumboulakis of centre-left daily To Vima seemed disappointed that Smaragdis hadn’t made his case for Varvakis as Greek exemplar more clearly. “The problem is that he doesn’t impose the ‘Varvakeion ideal’ through the body of the film per se. On the contrary, you feel it from the beginning as a given fact, similar to what Smaragdis did in his previous film, El Greco. It is obvious that the director can’t (and perhaps doesn’t want to) hide the huge admiration he has for Varvakis, the same way he did not hide it for El Greco.”

Meanwhile, K Terzis of the more radical-left I Avgi was downright sceptical about any political or social pretensions God Loves Caviar might have. “Smaragdis reproduces the well-known national narrative on screen, a narrative he doesn’t seek to redefine (to meet current needs) to address the crucial questions concerning our identity, questions that penetrate the body of our society today; he simply seeks to ‘apply a balm’ to the soul of today’s Greek with another biography of a great Greek, because, as the director casually reveals: ‘If each of us followed his example then today Greece would definitely be different.’ Is it that simple? To get today’s unemployed or debt-ridden shopkeeper to adopt the model of a pirate – a tycoon of the 18th century?”

Smaragdis is starting to take on the air of a bit of a chancer himself: budgeted at €6.5m (£5.2m), God Loves Caviar is the most expensive Greek film ever, brushing past his own El Greco’s €6.2m. There’s no doubt that the country’s film industry needs a pennant production to flag up the commercial side of things and complement the acclaim Yorgos Lanthimos and Athina Rachel Tsangari, the “Greek freak” directors, are bringing in at the arthouse end. But the film has launched in vastly different conditions to when El Greco gathered $8.2m in 2007. Greek box office dropped by about a third to around $100m last year, and looks like it’s going to take a further 20% hit this year. God Loves Caviar has done well considering to drum up 300,000 punters so far, but it’s not enough to put the film into profit.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=B9S8t23wG7w

Despite the flashy casting, its foreign prospects seem limited: Ioannis Varvakis has far less international recognition than El Greco, and the hostile reviews seem likely to sink God Loves Caviar’s prospects. But perhaps Smaragdis is content just to have crafted a heroic figure for his country – whether or not you think God Loves Caviar’s philosophy of picaresque opportunism is a responsible one given the scale of Greece’s problems.

But who said heroes were about realism or clearheadedness? Attempts to consciously manufacture them often fall flat, as Hollywood frequently discovers. Skyfall, which knocked God Loves Caviar off its perch in Greece, was one of the more intrepid recent experiments in remoulding a hero for the times. It felt a little too complacent, though, to coherently reposition Bond: highlighting Britain’s fallen world-status through him, then redundantly spending its last hour on a reassuring trip down pop-cultural memory lane.

But then Britain isn’t truly desperate. Heroes are most effective when the need for them is greatest, as God Loves Caviar shows. It doesn’t even matter if a bankrupt country ends up saluting a luxury-goods pioneer. Or if the film isn’t much cop.

• Thanks to Michael Moloney at Hellenic Bookservice for the translations.

Breeding snails, mushroom cultivation, growing saffron, olive products were among the interesting projects submitted by farmers from all over Greece during the first organized by the Ministry of Agriculture Forum “Greek Agriculture Innovates”.

Minister Costas Skandalidis announced that the Forum will continue taking place in coming years as it is very important for farmers to share experiences and to learn about new ideas and problems during implementation of their projects. The Minister said that next year there will be two awards in seven areas for best performances project.

Forum participants were divided into three halls of the Cultural Center “Athinais”, which held discussions on three themes: first – best practices in production related to biological and experimental agriculture and livestock, second theme – “from the field to the shelf” referred to trade, processing, etc., and the third – discussion on “Agribusiness and innovative activities”.

One of the most important concepts that participants discussed was associated with the “extroversion” of Greek agriculture and production, and the creation of brands that will be identified and associated with quality of products such as “olive oil from Kalamata”.

In relation to snail farms, which are fully equipped with Italian machinery and production methods are adopted from abroad, the coordinator of one of the themes stated that manufacturers should be very careful because the case can turn out to be very similar to those of genetically modified products. This is connected to the dependence of the manufacturer to foreign companies. This is why Panayota Vlahou, who has a snail farm since 2008, proposed the start of a research, which will help develop knowledge on the subject, which will come from Greece. For three years Panayota Vlahou and her collaborators have developed a total of 147 snail farms in Greece without being subsidized by the state. According to her, the ability to export abroad must be developed and production quality should be verified. Mrs. Vlahou estimated that one of the big advantages in doing business with snails is that the people engaged in it are between 19 and 47 years of age, who have left the urban centers and have chosen another way of life in nature.

Another interesting project is connected with the cultivation of pomegranates and the manufacture and packaging of pomegranate juice. “Pomegranates have a strange taste – astringent, which is not enjoyed by all. Cultivation has existed for five years, and juices are on the shelves in stores for the last three years. We grow pomegranates in 500 acres of land without being subsidized. We have commissioned a study of Aristotle University of Thessaloniki on how to better store the fruit. Our goal is for pomegranates to be consumed like oranges. Oranges have vitamin C, while pomegranates have vitamin C, but also many antioxidants” said Panagiotis Kodzaridis.

“The good news in agriculture is that in recent years imports have decreased and imports have increased. But several years ago of all Greek exports 33% were rural production, while now this percentage is only 22%. There is not only lack of innovation in production, but also lack of producer clusters. This is problematic because innovative techniques cannot be developed this way and products cannot be presented at international exhibitions, because if everyone goes alone, it comes out very expensive,” said George Apostolidis, former president of the Organization for Verification and Monitoring of Agricultural Products (AGROCERT).

One of the innovative projects proved to be with the cultivation of mushrooms, because a new kind of substrate for growing mushrooms was created. Currently, the company that was started in 2003 by two agronomists, employs 55 people. Of all mushroom species, 2500 are eatable and are not poisonous, while 200 are of strong pharmaceutical interest. The company is trying to start research that is associated with healing qualities of mushrooms. The bad side is that when going to public institutions to do their job, everyone looks at them suspiciously because they are mushroom producers. Therefore, the company representative asked for university professors to be found, who specialize in mushrooms, so that the public officials can turn to them and not behave suspiciously to the mushroom growers. Useful in the cultivation of mushrooms is the lack of multinational companies, because the mushrooms themselves are not producing harmful residues, and no fertilizers are used for their cultivation.

“Things are not pessimistic in our country. You bring optimism with your work, your desire, your innovation… We will focus on quality, not quantity, which we cannot have as a country, for many reasons. I’m talking about the agricultural company “Achelos”, which are leaving to Germany. I’m talking about the company in Lesvos, which with the quality of their products conquered the market in China. Or the chicken production in Pindos, which export products in the Balkans. Also about the snails, for which I heard just now,” said in his closing speech, PM George Papandreou.

Source: grreporter.com