Greek island fears its pistachio tradition is fading

Four farmhands whacked a pistachio tree with sticks, and ripe nuts rained down onto tarps. The bounty seemed plentiful but the crew was unimpressed.

- ANNA MARIA JAKUBEK

“Few pistachios,” Albanian worker Daso Shpata, 47, said under a blazing sun on Greece's Aegina island, among leafy trees bearing clusters of the red fruit and against a backdrop of chirping cicadas.

Climate change has slashed harvests. But there were other headaches too: children disinclined to continue the family business, trees replaced with holiday homes.

“The pistachio culture that we know is no longer viable,” said Eleni Kypreou, owner of the orchard on Aegina.

“If we want to save the trees, we need to decipher what they need... Otherwise it'll be something for the museum,” she told AFP.

Aegina is nowhere near the biggest pistachio producer, a distinction that goes to the United States and Iran, which produce several hundred thousand tonnes of the nuts each year.

But the tourist-heavy island — an hour by ferry from Athens, escorted by seagulls prowling for food — is said to have Greece's tastiest pistachios.

The “special flavour... comes from the ground, from the water. The water is a little salty,” said Ms Kypreou.

The 88-year-old treasures her 750 pistachio trees, known as roots (“riza”) in Greek. She sings and speaks to them, hoping for a good season.