Socio-economic description
Three villages are located within the study site area having a total population of 2010 people (2001 population census) (Table 2).
Table 2: Study site area settlements and population
| Village | No. Families | No. Males | No. Females | Total population |
| Maggana | 234 | 399 | 384 | 783 |
| Erasmio | 308 | 516 | 537 | 1053 |
| Dasohori | 52 | 85 | 89 | 174 |
| Total | 594 | 1000 | 1010 | 2010 |
Only a small part of the younger population migrates to large cities, but this has nothing to do with soil productivity. They just seem to be unwilling to continue their parent's work.
There are no clear numbers (from researches) showing the exact percentage either of illiterate people, or the graduates (from primary school, secondary school, university, etc). From conversations with local people emerges that almost everyone has completed primary school, a big percent (around 80%) has graduated from secondary school, and some of them (about 30%) continued to bachelor studies at the university. From the viewpoint of ethnicity and languages, all farmers living in the villages within the research area have Greek origin and talk mainly Greek.
Annual income distribution in the research area approaches numbers that correspond with poorer population; around 4.500 - 11.000€. This is probably due to the presence of big number of pensioners in the area.
The majority of the families, living in the research area, sustain their livelihood mostly from agricultural activities but also from livestock. Croplands are dominantly irrigated by wells (groundwater) and only those which are near to streams are irrigated with freshwater.
Because of the over-pumping of the aquifer in order to water the field crops, there has been seawater intrusion over the past years. As a result, irrigation with groundwater led to saline soils. The group that is most affected by this process is farmers of course, who are aware of this desertification problem. The degradation process significantly affects the quality of life of the local people. Saline soils lead to low productivity and thus to lower incomes (poverty) and increase social unrest.
Although the farmers are totally aware of the on-going degradation problem that affects their fields and their lives, they seem to be unwilling to change the way they irrigate their fields (with groundwater) as long as they don't have an alternative source of irrigation such as freshwater from local streams. Also, lack of information about how the saline fields can be cured is something that make the farmers believe that this situation is something permanent and will be extended to broader area.
