On the eastern slope of Mount Pelion (Pilio), in the region of Magnesia, at an altitude of 700 meters, a few bends before the village of Kissos, Yiannis Papageorgiou uses a blower strapped to his back to remove fallen leaves from the ground, so that only the thorny skins of the chestnuts remain on the thick grass of the orchard floor. \u201cThere is nothing to pick. Look at how small the chestnuts are, they cannot be sold,\u201d he says as soon as the machine is turned off and his voice can be heard.<\/p>\n
In the chestnut-producing villages of Pelion, most producers left this year\u2019s harvest on the ground. The long drought in the summer meant that the fruit did not ripen. The famous large chestnuts of Pelion were no bigger than the smallest ones of previous years. \u201cSuch production cannot even fetch a price that covers the cost of the daily wages of the workers during the harvest,\u201d producer Papageorgiou tells Kathimerini, looking at his crop on the ground in an orchard near the village of Kissos.<\/p>\n
We follow him around the orchard as he reports to us the mathematics of chestnuts. \u201cA 50 to 60-year-old tree yields around 60 kilos of chestnuts. Not all chestnuts from the same tree are the same size. From smallest to largest, we have categories \u2018B,\u2019 \u2018A,\u2019 \u2018extra\u2019 and \u2018luxury,\u2019 respectively. The price given by the merchant starts at 0.50 euros per kilo for the smallest and reaches 2.80 euros per kilo for the largest. This year, however, there are only category \u2018A\u2019 and \u2018B\u2019 chestnuts,\u201d he explains.<\/p>\n
The silence of the mountain above Kissos is broken by the noise of the repeller device that farmers have to keep wild boar away. The chestnut farmers are giving up in the face of climate change. They say that the fruits on their trees did not ripen because not a single drop of rain fell in Pelion during the summer, with the exception of a few millimeters in July. To be precise, a sudden downpour drenched the area. \u201cSo, even those that had reached the right size were torn, opened. If they are not sold in two days, they will rot. As likely as it is, of course, to sell them torn,\u201d says Papageorgiou.<\/p>\n
We descend toward the village of Kissos. Most of the 150 residents live off their chestnut production in the winter. In previous years, production had declined, but then something unexpected happened. The chestnut trees in Italy were affected by a disease and dried up \u2013 the people of Pelion call it the \u201cItalian crash.\u201d Demand for chestnuts increased, so many young people returned to their villages and built chestnut orchards from scratch. Things were going well until 2010 \u2013 in Kissos alone, around 300 tons were harvested every year \u2013 but the climate instability of recent years has upset the crops. In 2023, the region was hit by Storm Daniel, which uprooted trees and damaged farms. The heatwaves and drought of the last two years may prove to be the nail in the coffin for local producers.<\/p>\n
\nThings were going well until 2010 \u2013 in Kissos alone, around 300 tons were harvested every year \u2013 but the climate instability of recent years has upset the crops<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
Giorgos Nanos, professor at the Arboriculture Laboratory of the School of Agricultural Sciences at the University of Thessaly, knows well the secrets of flowering, ripening and harvesting chestnuts. \u201cIn addition to drought, trees are affected by high temperatures. Chestnut trees thrive at an altitude of 400-700 meters. However, this specific cultivation zone is gradually narrowing and may disappear. And then, stressed trees have an increased susceptibility to diseases, such as root rot. In addition to cultivated chestnut trees, we are seeing clusters of wild chestnuts dying from the disease,\u201d he tells Kathimerini. \u201cThis year is one of the worst for chestnut producers in Pelion. Even in Volos, at the local market, you can\u2019t find chestnuts of a decent size, only a few and small ones.\u201d<\/p>\n
In the center of Kissos, the sorting center is housed in a low building next to the road. The chestnuts, after being cleaned by hand, are put into a metal cylinder with holes that separates them into the different size categories, but this year the machine has almost not been used at all by small producers. \u201cELGA [the Hellenic Agricultural Insurance Organization] does not compensate for the drought, even though we pay the insurance premiums normally,\u201d producer Yiannis Moschos says. \u201cI collected 200 kilos, while I should have collected 4-5 tons.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s not profitable to collect them,\u201d adds producer Maria Kravariti. \u201cThis is the second year that we find ourselves in the same situation.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"theres-nothing-to-pick2\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/e050823385debc10552254735bc23069_3.-chestnuts.jpg\")
This year is one of the worst for chestnut producers in Pelion. \u2018Even in Volos, at the local market, you can\u2019t find chestnuts of a decent size, only a few and small ones,\u2019 says Professor Giorgos Nanos, from the School of Agricultural Sciences of the University of Thessaly. [Alexandros Avramidis]
\nVineyards and olives<\/p>\n
Chestnuts are not the only crops affected by climate change. Grapes were one of the first crops to be studied in this regard, as early as the early 2000s. \u201cThis happened due to the earlier harvest \u2013 from mid-September to late August. The vines began to ripen earlier, but this had an impact on the qualitative characteristics of the wines,\u201d Stefanos Koundouras, professor of viticulture and director of the Viticulture Laboratory of the Department of Agriculture at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, explained to Kathimerini.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn the following years, the situation worsened. The exposure of vineyards to high temperatures and high solar radiation began to cause dehydration in or even burn the plants, resulting in qualitative and quantitative damage to production,\u201d he says. \u201cThe third level is the heatwaves and water scarcity recorded, especially after 2012. In areas with marginal soil and climatic characteristics, such as Santorini, for example, we are now talking about the very viability of the vineyard.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Mediterranean is a hotspot of climate change. Dr Vassilis Gkisakis, agronomist and researcher at the Hellenic Agricultural Organization (ELGO)-DIMITRA, at the Institute of Olive Tree, Subtropical Crops and Viticulture, notes that climate instability has multiple consequences for olive trees, the most significant of which is the reduction in fruit, due to the stress of high temperatures and reduced available moisture.<\/p>\n
\u201cBesides, due to the unusually high temperatures of winter, we have insufficient accumulation of cold in the trees, with serious consequences for the fruit-setting process, that is, the conversion of flowers into fruits, which intensifies the phenomena of reduced production or even complete fruitlessness. Olive production is also affected by extreme and unstable weather phenomena,\u201d says Gkisakis. \u201cFor example, high temperatures in autumn, combined with humidity, are responsible for entomological and fungal diseases in the olive tree.\u201d<\/p>\n
Greenpeace research<\/p>\n
Vineyards and olive trees were the two crops used as examples in the Greenpeace research titled \u201cClimate Change in Greece,\u201d which was prepared by scientists from the National Observatory of Athens and published last March. The research analyzes the changes in three meteorological parameters considered critical for agriculture: drought, rainfall and temperature. \u201cThe 30-year upward trend in temperature reaches the country\u2019s average value of +1.5C, while locally it exceeds +2C, mainly in the northwestern part of Greece,\u201d the report notes.<\/p>\n
As explained elsewhere, one of the main impacts of gradual climate change on agricultural production is that, in the medium term, the cultivation zones \u2013 that is, the type of crops that can thrive in different regions of the country \u2013 will change. \u201cFor annual crops (e.g. cereals, vegetables, legumes) this may mean the gradual transfer of cropping zones further north, which may lead to the economic and social destruction of entire regions that have cultivated them for centuries,\u201d it states.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor existing tree crops (olive, grapes, stone fruit, pome fruit, etc) such a scenario would also be disastrous, since they cannot be moved. The first effects have already appeared, as due to the mild winters there is a reduction in the differentiated buds that give us flowers and then fruit,\u201d we read in the same report.<\/p>\n
And there is one more thing: Agriculture is both a victim of the climate crisis and at the same time largely \u201cblamed\u201d for its deterioration \u2013 agriculture is responsible internationally for a third of anthropogenic greenhouse gases, according to Greenpeace. \u201cThe model of intensive industrial agriculture, which is also applied in our country, is based on fossil fuels, expensive and polluting chemical inputs, high water consumption, subsidies, imports and monocultures,\u201d Greenpeace says.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"On the eastern slope of Mount Pelion (Pilio), in the region of Magnesia, at an altitude of 700…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":176629,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[77],"tags":[2567,20269,179,18,440,18295,19,2989,17,5,133,2990,1373],"class_list":{"0":"post-176628","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-science","8":"tag-agriculture","9":"tag-climate-crisis","10":"tag-economy","11":"tag-eire","12":"tag-environment","13":"tag-farmers","14":"tag-ie","15":"tag-in-depth","16":"tag-ireland","17":"tag-news","18":"tag-science","19":"tag-society","20":"tag-sustainability"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/115536833220854188","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176628","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=176628"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176628\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/176629"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=176628"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=176628"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=176628"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"theres-nothing-to-pick0\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/4abffc81410f54ba60c97a912ebb4d3b_2.-chestnuts.jpg\")
Most of the 150 residents of the village of Kissos live off their chestnut production in the winter. [Alexandros Avramidis]<\/p>\n