AFP feature: Greek farmers turning to smart methods growing and producing

For millennia, Greek farmers have used tried-and-true techniques to till the soil and produce some of the greatest crops the world has ever seen – to this day – but now a few are employing a marriage of science and agriculture.

In a world with smartphones, smart TVs, and smart cars that drive themselves, some farmers now are jumping off their tractors and dropping their hoes to move to smart methods of growing and producing.

In a feature, Agence France-Presse (AFP) illustrated the change through one of them, Sotiris Mournos was pictured using high-tech techniques to use his cell phone to check microclimate and humidity data about his fields on the plain of Imathia in northern Greece.

“The high-tech farming techniques he uses are making slow progress in Greece’s tradition-bound and struggling agricultural sector, but growers like him see them as key to their future,” the site said.

Mournos, 25, employs a Greek smart-farming app to boost production of his family’s cotton fields and fruit trees, the report noted, a young man in a field filled with the old.

Using real-time data recorded by a weather station, he can analyze and correlate the impact of weather conditions on his 10-hectare (nearly 25-acre) cotton plantation.

“We’ve managed to reduce the use of fertilizer and irrigation… (and thereby to) increase the financial return” of the farm, said Mournos, who gave up studying computer science in college to devote himself the family farm in the town of Platy.

It helps to be able to quickly and accurately measure the humidity or the nitrogen level in the soil to be able to reduce the excessive use of fertilizers and save water, he said of the advantages.

As in many other southern European countries, Greece’s agricultural sector is chronically short of water and smart farming could help deal with that problem, the site also said.

Agriculture has been a losing game for many in Greece, especially the young, who moved to the cities to find better-paying work without the back-breaking labor and morning-to-night hours of farming.

Agriculture now represents just five percent of Greece’s Gross domestic product (GDP) of 208.43 billion euros ($216.2 billion) which is half what it was in 2002.

The New Democracy government, wanting to keep the industry going as agricultural products represent a good chunk of exports, from saffron to nuts, budgeted 221.98 million euros ($231 million) over the next three years to revive the country’s farming industry.