‘For my children’: Different functions of the agricultural landscape and attitudes of farmers on different areas of Greece towards small scale landscape change

Abstract

Geografisk Tidsskrift-Danish Journal of Geography 111(2):117–130, 2011

Agricultural landscapes are valued with different sets of criteria by different actors and stakeholders, including farmers, whose opinions and attitudes can vary greatly. In this paper, farmers' attitudes and opinions towards small scale landscape change in different areas of Greece (Koropi, Zagori and Lesvos) are presented. The areas are very different in terms of landscape and the driving forces of landscape change, with intense urban sprawl in Koropi urbanization in Mytilini and abandonment in Kentriko Zagori. The comparison of the attitudes, the evaluations and justifications farmers offer for landscape change is used to understand the dynamics of this change. Findings indicate that although common threads run through all the cases, conflicts between the different roles are evident and the attitudes reveal an antithesis between deep attachment to the land and farming traditions on the one hand and market pressures on the other, with important implications for rural and land use policies that have to encourage a better balance between these different roles.

Key words:

• Agricultural landscape
• farmers
• landscape change
• Greece