Tobacco cultivation in Greece and Covid-19: challenges and opportunities

Abstract

Tobacco cultivation in Greece is surrounded by significant challenges relating to the decline in demand and exclusion of this crop cultivation from the support schemes (Report Linker, 2023). In addition to already challenging conditions, Greek tobacco production faced the consequences presented by Covid-19 as every other segment of the Greek and global economy. This study focuses on the evaluation of challenges and opportunities brought by the pandemic situation for tobacco growers who own small and large farms in Greece. More specifically, the qualitative research methods is used to get insights through interviews from 7 farmers that are active on the cultivation of tobacco in Greece. The findings show that the pandemic provided with unique challenges to the tobacco growers in Greece. These challenges are reported to amplify the difficult conditions and financial sustainability of the farms in light of rising costs of production, difficulty to access the necessary workforce and inability to take advantage of opportunities that the pandemic opened for many other segments of agriculture. Additionally, findings suggest that the challenging conditions through covid-19 pandemic situation have underlined the difficulty of farms to remain sustainable financially over the next decade, thus promoting a faster transition of these farms onto other crops that are more financially sustainable.