``Erst Kommt das Fressen’’: The Neoliberal Restructuring of Agriculture and Food in Greece

While public debt has become the focal point of discussions of the Greek crisis, the Greek crisis has been used as an opportunity to extend a series of neoliberal reforms. I examine the agricultural and food sector of Greece since 1981 and I show how Greece’s integration into the European market, following Greece’s entry in the European Economic Community led to (a) the dismantling of agricultural and food production in Greece and (b) the increased power of intermediate actors in the Greek food system. I argue that a series of grassroots responses, including solidarity initiatives and direct consumer-farmer interactions, offer insight into a strategy of food sovereignty to help rebuild productive capacity in agriculture and address food insecurity. However, the three structural adjustment programs implemented in Greece after 2010 undermined these responses, by furthering the liberalization of Greek agriculture and the centralization of the food sector. Finally I argue that recent lender intervention into governance, and particularly lender veto-power over all proposed legislation introduced by the third Structural Adjustment Program of 2015, poses additional challenges for strategies aiming at food sovereignty.