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Waste not, want not: traditional responses to crop failure in Greece

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 January 2009

Paul Halstead
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Extract

On May 29 1986, a storm tracked across central Macedonia. In the hills north of the small market town of Langadhas, a violent fall of hail flattened ripening cereal crops, but the destruction was very patchy: some fields belonging to the village of Assiros were devastated, but others were unharmed and the storm spared a neighbouring village before causing renewed damage further along its path. Farmers hit by the storm were lucky – they received compensation for their losses from the European Economic Community – but their neighbours were less fortunate. Across the whole region, the winter of 1985/6 had been virtually rainless and some farmers unaffected by the storm barely recouped their sowing costs.

Type
Research Article
Information
Rural History , Volume 1 , Issue 2 , October 1990 , pp. 147 - 164
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1990

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