The season of the olive harvest is with us: all over Greece thousands of people from all walks of life will be descending on their ancestral plots to harvest this year’s crop and hopefully take home enough oil to last them through the year. However, the fact that these “weekend farmers” are unused to the stresses and strains of agricultural work results in hospitals seeing a procession of people with minor or sometimes major injuries incurred while gathering the olives.
Broken limbs, spinal injuries, and cuts and burns are the most common injuries, according to the director of the newly renovated Orthopedic Clinic at the Chania General Hospital Vasilis Petroulakis, who spoke to the Haniotika Nea.
“Those who get injured are chiefly the weekend farmers,” he said. “That is to say, inexperienced people who are unused to agricultural work, who work in the town and go to their village for a couple of days to do a bit of work or to gather their olives. These are the ones who get injured and who need to take a lot of care.”
The doctor recommends that citizens exercise great care in using agricultural tools such as chainsaws, generators and electric olive harvesters. “I’m not joking when I refer to weekend farmers,” he said. “For example we have quite a few injuries from people trying to move from tree to tree on a slope, they don’t know how to walk and they fall and break a bone. And we have had cases – really – of someone sitting on a branch and then cutting it in the middle so that the branch falls down and they fall with it.”
However, things have improved in recent years, with the number of injuries noticeably reduced. According to the doctor this is due to the fact that “trees are often pruned so that they don’t put on height and there is no need to go up high to operate the harvesters.”
“In the past the Orthopedic Clinic was filled with patients who had been injured while olive harvesting at this time of year. Now there are fewer incidents but people still need to take care and avoid dangerous manoeuvres,” the director said.
The Biolea Estate at Astrikas south of Kolymbari is a family business producing organic olive oil by traditional methods adapted to conform with modern food standards. In a video on YouTube the family’s Chloe Dimitriadis explains how the process works, and gives some of the background to olive oil production on Crete.
Egyptian workers to help with the olive harvest
While much olive oil production is a family affair, larger-scale olive farmers are facing a different set of problems. Following the lockdowns due to the covid pandemic, Greece is suffering from a lack of seasonal workers, and the problem has become particularly acute for the coming olive harvest. Gone are the days when workers could be seen each morning waiting at the crossroads in Kolymbari for employment. Local growers are being faced with the dilemma of either trying to to gather the crop unaided or simply leaving it to rot on the trees. The latter solution is particularly problematic since not only does it deprive the farmers of income, but the fallen fruit provides a fertile ground for overwintering of the olive fly (dakos), thus establishing the conditions for poor-quality production in the following year.
For this reason the government has taken steps to implement an agreement outstanding from 2021 to bring seasonal workers from Egypt. Following a meeting between the deputy foreign minister Miltiades Varvitsiotis with the Egyptian ambassador in June, it has been decided to grant 5,000 seasonal workers visas for up to 9 months in each year (the maximum time allowed by the EU). Every worker will be obliged to provide proof of employment before leaving for Greece, and to return home at the end of the specified period. The definitive text of the agreement is due to be signed by Cairo in the coming weeks.