“Look, the European Union wanted consumers and they trained us with free money,” Dimitriadis told me. “The subsidies in farming alone were unbelievable. Nobody asked how money was spent. There were people with 10 olive trees claiming they produced 10 tons of oil, and collecting for each ton. Nobody checked.

“Now there is a huge correction. The free money did a lot of harm to the young. They believed they were owed everything. Today I see young people with university degrees coming back to farming. I see youth from the cities returning to orange or olive farming on their parents’ patch of land. Everything before was consumption, marketing, promotion. I think young Greeks have understood the importance of doing something with their hands, of work and production.”

The new buzzword is resourceful: Greeks are adapting, as they have done many times in the past.

Greece has been casual with its agricultural wealth, as it was casual about most things until its harsh comeuppance. Crete alone produces some 5 percent of the world’s olive oil — but most of it sold in bulk and then marketed under other labels. The potential to develop Greek brands, as the Italians have long done, is there — and young people know it.

We drove inland from Chania (a town of profound Venetian influence: Much conquered, Greeks know about survival) to Astrikas, where Dimitriadis’s family has farmed for six generations. His daughter, Chloe, 24, who studied political science at McGill University in Canada, greeted us. She has just enrolled in a farming course, a young Greek who has decided her future lies on the land making stone-milled, sweet, mild olive oil.

“I did not plan to come back,” she told me. “I thought I might stay in Canada. But about a year ago I came and started helping my father and learning. And, you know, I have a friend working in a coffee shop for €3 an hour — and she’s afraid to lose her job! I have a cousin who just quit college in Athens to come here and work with his grandfather on the land. And I just realized: My future is here.”

Greece is getting back to basics. My bet is that a decade from now the harvest will be rich.