The horizontal ban on the movement of flocks for this year’s summer season, prompted by the outbreak of sheep and goat pox, ruptures a centuries-old ecological, productive, and cultural relationship. Transhumant livestock farming is a fundamental mechanism for landscape management. It regulates vegetation, maintains summer pastures, preserves indigenous breeds that have shaped the history of Greek livestock farming, reduces the accumulation of combustible material, produces high-quality food, and keeps alive communities that, for centuries, have supported the economy and culture of this land.
What does this ban actually mean?
It means animals confined in stables during a heatwave. Producers being burdened with the cost of animal feed in an already financially exhausted profession. Summer pastures left unmanaged. Vegetation turning into combustible material during the fire prevention season. Intolerable pressure on production.
Within this bleak reality for transhumant livestock farming, the state further discriminates against it:
Feed compensation is granted on the basis of coupled support, which depends on milk delivery invoices. Indigenous animal breeds are not improved breeds and do not have comparatively high milk-production capacity.
As a result, livestock farms with housed and improved-breed sheep receive the largest compensation payments, while extensive and transhumant farming systems based on grazing receive far smaller amounts, since their production is much lower. In reality, however, these are the only farming systems whose costs have truly multiplied many times over.
The logic of compensation must change in favour of transhumant livestock farming. The state must guarantee the safe movement of flocks, ensuring that all biosecurity measures are observed on behalf of the few remaining transhumant livestock farmers who have continued to safeguard an invaluable cultural, biological, productive, social, and environmental asset.
One of the remaining transhumant livestock farmers, Petros Mokas, is a keeper of the Kalarytiko sheep breed, known locally as “Boutsiko,” which marked the history of Kalarrytes and Syrrako, the great shepherding villages of the Pindus mountains. He lives and works in Vlochos, Karditsa, with around 600 sheep and knowledge passed down from generation to generation. In the summers, he moves with his flocks up to Kalarrytes, in the Tzoumerka mountains of Ioannina.
The Kalarytiko breed was shaped by the harsh conditions of the Pindus mountains. It is resilient, able to thrive on sparse feed, and adapted to long-distance movements, characteristics that historically linked it to the nomadic livestock farming of Epirus. In recent years, its population has declined dramatically and appears to number just over 5,000 animals, scattered across the regions of Thessaly and Epirus. When a breed numbers fewer than 10,000 animals, it tends toward extinction and its preservation is at risk.
The value of the breed is not only historical or cultural. Its products have exceptional quality characteristics, such as the omega-3 fatty acid content of its meat, which is also distinguished by its flavour. Thus, protecting transhumant livestock farming is not only about preserving a way of life, but also about safeguarding a genetic, productive, and gastronomic wealth that constitutes a significant asset for the country.
Together with his animals, Petros Mokas also carries the continuity of the flute, the clarinet, the shepherd’s song, and the lament. In his person, transhumant livestock farming is embodied as living knowledge, art, and production. His voice is that of a world that endures, yet sees the conditions of its existence being annulled.
His poem, “O Anastenagmos” (The Sigh), is precisely that: a lament for a world where people, animals, mountains, flocks, music, and landscapes form a shared life. A world that today is treated as a remnant of another era, while in reality it remains one of the most fundamental relational infrastructures of the Greek countryside.
Κλαίνε θρηνούνε οι κορφές
μοιρολογούν τα πλάγια
μήναν οι στάνες ορφανές
δήχως λαμπρά κοπάδια
Μήτε τσοπάνης σαλαγάει
μήτε σκυλί γαυγίζει
μόν τ’ αγρημιού το ουρλιαχτό
στου φεγγαριού το δείλι
Βουβάθηκαν οι πέρδικες
δεν κελαηδούν τ’ αηδόνια
κουδούνια είχαν συνοδιά
τραγούδι και φλογέρα
Μοιρολογάει κι ο ποιστικός
με τον κατή τα βάζει
στους κάμπους!!! Τον εδιάταξε
ποιός είσαι ’σύ; Του κράζει
Για δε μ’ αφίνεις να διαβώ
στις ράχες τραγουδώντας
με καρτερούν οι σταυραετοί
με καρτερούν τα λόγγια