Why Some Greeks are Returning to the Country and Heading to Farm School

Greece is still in dire economic straits.

Unemployment is more than 20 percent.

Some Greeks are choosing to return to the land, and begin farming like their parents and grandparents before them.

Anchor Aaron Schachter learns more from Evangelos Vergos of the American Farm School in Thessaloniki.

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Aaron Schachter: Greece remains at the center of Europe’s financial crisis. The country is still struggling to meet European austerity demands in order to keep the bailout funds coming. Meanwhile, the Greek economy is still in the dumps and unemployment is over twenty percent. Some Greeks who’ve lost their jobs are returning to the profession of their fathers and grandfathers – farming. But they need some training. One place they’re turning to for help is the American Farm School in the northern Greek city of Thessaloniki. It was started by an American missionary in 1904. Evangelos Vergos is director of research and adult education at the American Farm School. He say enrollment is way up.

Evangelos Vergos: We had a rise of a hundred and forty nine percent in comparison to the previous year and those were mostly unemployed people that lost their jobs in spite of their age. But also a good fraction of those were people who finished universities and they never had the opportunity to do hands-on [sounds like] work and they came to us to learn more in order to be more competitive out in the market.

Schachter: Now, as you mentioned, a lot of the people coming to you are former office workers and things like that. How would you rate their chances of success? I mean a lot of people think, “Oh, I’d love to get back to the land,” but I imagine it’s not so easy.

Vergos: Well, my problem and my question mark relies on the fact of how many of those will stay in those type of business they chose to do because were forced to do it in two or three years time.

Schachter: Yeah, and how many will survive do you think?

Vergos: Oh God. I’d say a small percentage. Three to five percent. You know, the problem is that the state is not developing something for them. There’s nothing institutional in place to support those people. To be more specific, I had a couple here, mid-forties, they were asking, the husband was asking me how to become a sheep producer in order to use milk for cheese making, Feta cheese. It’s a hard work. The first thing to ask him was, in front of his wife, if he ever asked and discussed the whole thing with his wife before he gets into this kind of decision. And he said no. Well, it’s better, I said to him, to find the right [??] between you, outside my office, and then come back and discuss the whole thing.

Schachter: So you explained to him how hard it might be to be a sheep farmer?

Vergos: It is.

Schachter: Yeah.

Vergos: I had to warn him, especially to those who have no idea about farming.

Schachter: Are there particular crops or livestock that students are now interested in growing? Are they all coming to you wanting to be sheep farmers?

Vergos: It’s both. First of all, we have a lot of interesting people coming to learn how to organize a small farm business. However, those who come for animal production, they have in mind to produce milk for cheese. That’s why we call the whole sector now “agro-food sector”. So they come to seminars either to produce organic food products or to learn how to produce wine, a family type of operation, or the best groups we have in terms of size of quality are those who come for cheese-making, and not only Feta, but also bee production, honey production.

Schachter: Well now, all of those things, Greek cheese, wine, honey, that all seems like a good idea, right? Something that could be marketed inside the country and outside the country.

Vergos: Yes. And this year, for the first ever, we had a homemade production of beer.

Schachter: Oh.

Vergos: People started being very interested in beer production in a small scale.

Schachter: So do you think any of these folks will make money?

Vergos: Oh, they’ve already done it. We have very good stories to tell about people finishing our seminars and start working on what they learned here

Schachter: Doctor Evangelos Vergos of the American Farm School in Thessaloniki. Thank you so much for you time.

Vergos: Thank you.

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