MEDITERRANEAN AGRONOMIC INSTITUTE OF CHANIAINVESTIGATING A PARADIGMOF FOOD SYSTEM SUSTAINABILITY:THE CASE OF FRESH VEGETABLE PRODUCTIONAND DISTRIBUTION IN CRETEA THESIS SUBMITTED INPARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THEREQUIREMENT FOR THE DEGREE OFMASTER OF SCIENCEDEPARTMENT OFSUSTAINABLE AGRICULTUREKRISTY APOSTOLIDESCHANIA, GREECE NOVEMBER 2008

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to express my sincere thanks to the Director of the MediterraneanAgronomic Institute of Chania (MAICh), Alkinoos Nikolaidis, for giving me thisopportunity to spend some time exploring the intricacies of the food system on Crete.I would also like to thank the Coordinator of the Sustainable Agriculture Department,Dr. Yannis Livieratos, for his consistent trust in my dedication to this work (in spiteof my frequent absences), his great support of my desires to conduct an unorthodoxresearch project, and, finally, his guidance concerning life in Crete.I express my greatest thanks to my advisor for this project, Dr. EmmanouilKambourakis, for completely understanding the background to and my motivationsfor conducting this study, providing me with the support and encouragement to makeit happen, and reassurance that I am not alone in the pursuit of an idyllic agro-foodsystem.I would also like to thank the Organizing Committee of the Forward Look: EuropeanFood Systems in a Changing World for providing me with insight into currentresearch being conducted in this area.Especially, I would like to thank all the farmers and business owners who took timefrom their busy workdays to enthusiastically allow me to ask them endless questions.A very loud thanks goes out to all the translators who have become friends andfriends who became translators: Yiorgos Eleftheriou, Adamantia Kotinakki, Dimitris Niklis, Agapi Vassiliou, and Evangelia Voutsaki. Without you I would still bestuttering through interviews.To all my family across the ocean, thanks for all your love and support from afar andyour understanding of my tendency to leave the country. To my family here: the two best best men (koumbaroi), Cristos and Yiorgos; the two best classmates, Melania andMaher; and the best co-procrastinator, Ata. I greatly appreciate all the distractions,unending assistance in adjusting to life in Greece, and mostly, the laughter.While the omission of their names signifies only a lack of room on the page, I wouldalso like to thank all the new friends from all these new places, and all the old friendsfrom the old place, to whom I owe a greater understanding of the world and myself.Finally, I would like to thank David. Without him, I would be only another student.