Mediterranean rural areas have been witnessing, for several decades now, significant changes. Widening disparities between the hinterland and the intensively developed plains, between rain-fed areas and irrigated areas, poverty in the South and the East, degradation of the environment and landscapes, are the overriding symptoms of a situation that has grown critical.
This situation is likely to even grow worse if the liberalisation of agricultural trade in process of negotiation were not to be controlled. In addition, global warming would entail severe impacts on Mediterranean agriculture.
