Sweet chestnut and agricultural development: a farmers’ perspective for Northern Greece

ABSTRACT

Agroforestry systems are traditional land-use practices in Greece occupying three million hectares. Despite the positive agro-environmental and cultural benefits, within the last decade, they are not considered economically profitable. The present study surveys the farmers’ attitudes towards agroforestry practices, and more specifically, the cultivation of chestnut (Castanea sativa Mill.). With the assistance of different econometric models, we attempted to unveil the profile of chestnut growers, their opinion on the environmental impact of the crop adoption, the determinants of the criteria they considered for its selection, as well as the cultivation practices they apply in a purely agricultural region of northern Greece. Insight into these issues may well provide policy makers with tools to promote the adoption of chestnut and other forest species in agriculture, with the aim of ensuring protection of the ecosystem, as well as improvements in agricultural income and therefore incorporating the concept of sustainability in agricultural development.

KEYWORDS:

• Agroforestry
• Land use change
• risk perception
• Castanea
• sustainable agriculture

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Eleni Zafeiriou

Eleni Zafeiriou is Associate Professor at the department of Agricultural Development in Democritus University of Thrace. She has a first degree in Forestry and Natural Environment (Aristotle University of Thessaloniki) and in economics (University of Macedonia). She also holds a Master of Science in Economic Policy and Development (University of Macedonia) and a MSc in Mountainous Water Management. Finally she holds a PhD in Applied Economic Statistics. She has been in the Department of Agricultural Development since 2012. Her scientific field is Applied Economics Statistics focusing on the socio – economic dimension of environmental and energy issues. With more than 70 papers in different scientific journal (h index 11 in Scopus) and 4 books in Quantitative Methods with application on Agricultural and Environmental Economics tries to employ every time novel econometric techniques to examine the validity of different theories in agricultural and environmental economics.

Christos Chatzissavvidis

Dr Christos Chatzissavvidis is a Professor in Pomology (Fruit Tree Science) in the Department of Agricultural Development School of Agricultural and Forestry Sciences, Democritus University of Thrace. He has a first degree in Agricultural Sciences (Crop Production), a MSc degree in Plant Physiology and a PhD in Pomology from the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (Greece). He teaches pomology and plant physiology lessons to undergraduate and postgraduate students. His research focuses on the physiology and growing of fruit trees, plant nutrition and plant propagation. His publication record includes 51 publications in peer-reviewed journals and an h-index=12 (Scopus), with more than 500 citations. He is also a co-author of three chapters in books and I have published 77 works in proceedings of scientific congresses. He has served as invited reviewer by 25 scientific journals for 65 papers and as a Guest Editor in a Special Issue of the journal Applied Sciences (MDPI).

Chrysovalantou Antonopoulou

Chrysovalantou Antonopoulou is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Agricultural Development of Democritus University of Thrace (Greece). She has a first degree in Agricultural Sciences, a MSc degree in Horticultural Science and a PhD in Pomology from the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. Her scientific field is Pomology and her research focuses on the physiology, propagation, nutrition and growing of fruit trees. She has published 20 articles in peer-reviewed international journals (h-index 8 in Scopus), with 200 citations. She is also a co-author of a book on pomology and of four book chapters. Finally, she has published 23 works in proceedings of scientific congresses.

Garyfallos Arabatzis

Garyfallos Arabatzis is Professor (2018-today) at the Department of Forestry and Management of the Environment and Natural Resources of Democritus University of Thrace. He has published over 220 articles in international and Greek journals and proceedings. More specifically, 110 articles are published in international journals (mainly in top-tier journals). His work has been cited more than 2,600 times (information from Google Scholar) and 1600 times (information from SCOPUS).