“Instead of 40 Sheep there are 400”: Traditional Grazing Practices and Landscape Change in Western Lesvos, Greece

Abstract

In the semi-arid zones of the Eastern Mediterranean, husbandry of sheep and goats has been an integral part of livelihoods and survival strategies since the Neolithic, but underwent major changes after approximately the 1960s. In this paper, we analyse the landscape changes that were induced by the following increase of sheep numbers and the underlying socio-economic and biophysical driving forces in an insular semi-arid locality of the Eastern Mediterranean, Western Lesvos, Greece. Thirty-four sheep farmers were surveyed and secondary sources such as agricultural statistics and regional literature were analysed. The findings indicate a transition from an agrosilvopastoral system strongly dependent on local ecosystem services to a market economy with intensified animal production that has brought a significant loss of traditional ecological knowledge. This loss is expressed in the simplification of current management practices in comparison to former ones. The causes of the resulting intensification and environmental degradation are mostly economic (low incomes from farming) and social (inability to manage collectively common resources). The landscape changes recorded are less arable land and more grazing lands in a time frame stretching back to the 1960s.

Key words:

• traditional ecological knowledge
• agroforestry
• silvopastoral
• landscape change
• Mediterranean
• Western Lesvos

Notes

1. Defined as “a cumulative body of knowledge, practice, and belief, evolving by adaptive processes and handed down through generations by cultural transmission, about the relationship of living beings (including human) with one another and with their environment” (Berkes, 2008, p. 7).

2. According to Blondel and Aronson (1999), maquis shrubland formations occur around the Mediterranean Basin with a wide variety of names such as macchia in Italy or matorral in Spain and include evergreen shrubs such as Cistus creticus, Quercus coccifera, and Pistacia lentiscus in the case study area.

3. Phrygana scrub comprises evergreen spiky perennials of lower stature and complexity than maquis such as Sarcopoterium spinosum in the area (Blondel & Aronson, 1999).

4. More details and the official documents are available (in Greek only) in the web space of the Greek Ministry of Rural Development and Food: www.minagric.gr

5. Although Bitzelis (2010) mentions also local goat breeds, he asserts that these claims lack documentation until today.

6. Although the average age of census farmers is not known, the average age of the sampled farmers is 49 years (only 15% older than 65) and almost all are exclusively “professional” sheep farmers.

7. All farmers are eligible for the SFP, with set amounts according to historic production (the so-called ‘eligible’ number of sheep for which each farmer receives payments provided he/she can prove enough grazing lands, owned or rented) and land data from 1999 – 2001, with an average pay of €2,436 per farm for the island.

8. Compensatory payments are only for full time farmers, younger than 65 and farmers with an average payment of €2,342 per farm for the island. Seventy percent of recipients of LFAs for the whole island are located in the study area.

9. The calculated pressure from official data stands at 0.7 AU per ha in 2000, compared to 0.3 AU per hectare in the 1960s. This difference between the densities in sampled farms and the overall average can be attributed to: (a) that sampled farms are “professional” and therefore have more sheep and higher densities, (b) that the average density from the census data is calculated with the use of the total area of grazing lands per settlement and since there are grazing lands that are not grazed, the actual density is underestimated. A previous unpublished research in Filia in 2008 that selected farmers in random, came up with only a few “professional” farmers and the rest were part-timers or retired with reduced animal numbers and unused grazing lands.