i think something else that is part of this is common to almost all of southern europe, with the exception of maybe bulgaria and greece
small plot farms are very very common, in italy, number one in the world for 5 acre farm size and romania is not far behind and then you look across the balkans and they also have a lot of small plots and to some extent also portugal and spain (especially on the islands)
they are all growing tomatoes and capsicum and corn to feed pigs and keeping small flocks of sheep and small dairies, making their own cheeses and pickles and mostly selling directly to local distributors and not exporters
mostly the grain growing is for export, and all these small plot farmers eat from their own product or trade with neighbours
can confirm with experience, after being exposed to p2p little farmers markets for a great part of my life I then lived in a big city far from home and started to consume the "same products" but buying them from the great distribution. The difference is like night and day for most of the products, meat and olive oil in particular (even if I think "italian great distribution" is better then "great distribution in most other countries" because for some products it works just as "market aggregator" and still the products available come from little productions).
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