Farmers’ and stockbreeders’ mobilizations across Greece have been dominating the political agenda and media attention in the country over the first half of December, with standing demands for lower production costs and better prices for their goods now even more animated amid a farm subsidies furor – the OPEKEPE scandal - valued at hundreds of millions of euros.

A now defunct state agency, known in Greek as OPEKEPE, remains at the center of parliamentary review and criminal investigations in the country and by the EU prosecutor’s office. The fraudulent payments of ag-related subsidies have generated heaps of criticism against the ruling center-right government, although the political opposition also struggles to propose solutions that don’t involve throwing “more state money” at the problem.

Mobilizations that often lead to the blocking of highway intersections with heavy farm machinery as well as the blockading of ports, airports and border posts are scenes that have been played out in the country practically every “off season” for producers, late January and February, yet this year the anger from the farm subsidy scandal has energized the protests.

Just as ominously, there’s an ongoing sheep and goat pox epidemic in Greece that has decimated stockbreeders’ herds, another headache for the sector and the state.  

In this edition of “Explaining Greece” Celia Bakostergiou, a 20-year-old agronomy student at the Athens Agricultural University who is actively involved in her family’s farm near the south-central Greek town of Domokos, sheds light on some of the challenges facing the vital sector and what it’s like to be a young female farmer in a rural province.

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