Lake Karla

The image of millions of fish filling the port of Volos and the surrounding areas of Pagasetic Gulf represents perhaps the greatest ecological disaster since the “Daniel” storm hit Thessaly on September 4, 2023. This storm, along with “Elias” later that month, caused massive damage.

"As long as the Common Agricultural Policy does not change, no country will be able to absorb 100% of the resources it is entitled to," Rural Development and Food Minister Lefteris Avgenakis said in an interview with Skai radio station on Wednesday.

Sitting in a small motorboat, farmer Babis Evangelinos glides over land he once cultivated on the Thessaly plain in central Greece, the nearby trunks of his fruitless almond trees submerged by floodwater.

Eight hundred farmers in Thessaly, central Greece, are demanding the restoration of some 18,000 hectares of land around Lake Karla that was flooded during Storm Daniel storm last September.

The plan presented on Friday in Larissa by Regional Governor Dimitris Kouretas outlines the need for a new approach to agricultural production in Thessaly, and includes the doubling of Lake Karla's size and its conversion into an irrigation reservoir.