{"id":168,"date":"2025-07-04T17:00:24","date_gmt":"2025-07-04T14:00:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/jrn350-su25\/?p=168"},"modified":"2025-08-11T19:03:28","modified_gmt":"2025-08-11T16:03:28","slug":"dry-wells-farming-in-the-cyclades-amid-drought-and-overtourism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/jrn350-su25\/2025\/07\/04\/dry-wells-farming-in-the-cyclades-amid-drought-and-overtourism\/","title":{"rendered":"Dry Wells: Farming in the Cyclades Amid Drought and Overtourism"},"content":{"rendered":"\r\n

By Annalisa Jenkins<\/em>

On a hot June morning, Stelios Vathrakokoilis leaned against the bed of his pickup and looked out over the cracked fields on the Cycladic island of Naxos where he and his brother grow potatoes. He gestured over his shoulder and sighed.

\u201cFifteen days from now, this well will be completely dry,\u201d he said. When the water runs out, he will be forced to irrigate with salty groundwater.

Having grown up in the 1970s and 80s, Vathrakokoilis remembers farmers making a good
living. Naxos potato seeds, known for the unique flavor from the island\u2019s low-calcium soil, were coveted around the country.

Since the mid-90s, however, climate change has parched the island and over-tourism has poached agricultural land, workers, and water. A few decades ago, Naxos produced over 20,000 tons of potatoes each year, Dimitrios Kapounis, President of the island\u2019s farming association, said. This year, he hopes it will produce three.

In 2024, drought left the island\u2019s reservoir empty and the island\u2019s hotels over-pumped their wells, leaving Vathrakokoilis\u2019 dry. That year, he said he \u201cdidn\u2019t plant a thing, absolutely nothing, because of the lack of water.\u201d Vathrakokoilis\u2019 work is threatened by climate change, which parches the island; over-tourism, which poaches agricultural land, workers, and water; and a culture that devalues farming.

Vathrakokoilis says the government has yet to fulfill its promise to put water meters on Naxos; there is no tool to measure or regulate how much the ever-growing number of hotels pull\u2014the hot tub on one hotel room\u2019s private balcony looks out over a large pool.

Over the past several decades, the island\u2019s economy has become dependent on tourism: \u201cif hotels don\u2019t work in the summer, the farmers don\u2019t work in the winter,\u201d Irene Lianou, Reservation Manager at hotel Lianos Village, said.

\u201cTourists are fine,\u201d Vathrakokoilis said, \u201cwe all profit from that.\u201d But he needs the island to find a way to share dwindling water resources.

He has some ideas. If he had the money, Vathrakokoilis would install a water-efficient drip system to irrigate each plant directly rather than sprinkling the whole field. Since 2017, he has advocated for a waste-water system that would re-use millions of cubic meters of grey water for agriculture rather than dumping it in the ocean, bringing in water more cost-effectively than a desalination plant.

The project has seen little progress over the last eight years. Vathrakokoilis is frustrated by the country\u2019s politics, which he thinks are more wrapped up in partisan infighting than passing policies that will help people. \u201cThis is crazy, we\u2019re losing so much water,\u201d he said.

Eleni Myrivili, who served as Athens\u2019 Chief Resilience Officer from 2014 to 2019, agrees the Greek government could do more to address the problem. \u201cI swear to you, nobody in the central government, and nobody in city government was talking about climate change,\u201d she said in a recent interview of her time in the Athens office.

Now working for the UN, Myrivili says that globally, climate efforts are focused on mitigation, not the kind of acute adaptation projects that Vahtrakokoilis needs to keep his farm alive. He feels forgotten, that \u201cno one cares for agriculture.\u201d

Paros\u2019 mayor, Kostas Bizas, who campaigned on regulating tourism, spoke of food production with resignation, suggesting an inevitable decline. While the government could subsidize equipment modernization, he says the fate of farmers is in the hands of local society, where they cannot compete with the prices of imported goods.

As the effects of climate change worsen and adaptation policies become increasingly necessary, Greece must decide if it will invest in climate adaptation for Cycladic farmers. Eleni Myrivili grapples with how lawmakers ought to decide what is worth saving, scoffing at new housing developments in Boston and Miami flood zones.

While not optimistic about agriculture\u2019s future on his island, Mayor Bizas worries about tourism becoming its only industry; \u201cYou cannot totally rely on tourism, because it comes and it goes,\u201d Mayor Bizas warns. Katarina Moschu worries that the boom of tourism will end, and that \u201cthe locals will have sold out their island and will be left with nothing.\u201d

If his government does not invest to help him adapt to climate change, Vathrakokoilis is sure about one thing. \u201cIn a few years, there will be no agricultural production on the island.\u201d<\/p>\r\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Annalisa Jenkins On a hot June morning, Stelios Vathrakokoilis leaned against the bed of his pickup and looked out over the cracked fields on the Cycladic island of Naxos where he and his brother grow potatoes. He gestured over his shoulder and sighed. \u201cFifteen days from now, this well will be completely dry,\u201d he … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Dry Wells: Farming in the Cyclades Amid Drought and Overtourism”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6112,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-168","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-climate"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/jrn350-su25\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/168","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/jrn350-su25\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/jrn350-su25\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/jrn350-su25\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6112"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/jrn350-su25\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=168"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/jrn350-su25\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/168\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":206,"href":"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/jrn350-su25\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/168\/revisions\/206"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/jrn350-su25\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=168"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/jrn350-su25\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=168"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/jrn350-su25\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=168"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}