Now here is some good news. Faced with an ever deepening recession, some local groups have begun coming up with novel ways to beat the financial crunch. in a bid to cut out the middlemen farmers across the state of Pieria, near Thessaloniki, decided to unite with local residents to provide cheap produce to people whose family budgets have been slashed by the financial crisis, and also to help producers who say they are being squeezed by middlemen!
The initiative began with potatoes. Those interested in purchasing potatoes were able to log onto specific websites order how many bags they wanted and then the producers scheduled a date and sold their potatoes to everyone who had a voucher to purchase them with the help of a few volunteers. A simple idea, but certainly very clever.
The result: Hundreds of people turned up to buy potatoes at massively reduced prices as they were sold to consumers at the cost of production. To be more exact, the cost of a kilo of potatoes in Greece runs at about 60-70 cents, and from what was said farmers were selling them to middlemen at only 20-25 cents a kilo. That means that the middlemen were making a massive amount of profit in a period when pensions and salaries have been cut by almost 40 percent. Most importantly, they were not selling Greek potatoes on the market, and rather importing cheaper produce from third world nations plus they were "playing" with the cost of the product on the market since they had total control.
More products are now being put on sale, and promoted via the social networks, while more cities across Greece are starting to adopt the same procedure.
Note: It's about time
Watch the live video report on MEGA channel
http://www.megatv.com/koinoniaoramega/default.asp?catid=20695&subid=2&pubid=28806918
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