Terrace quality in olive groves is intermediate according to the farmers and observation partly verifies this claim. It is worth mentioning that farmers who have said that their olive terraces are destroyed graze them, thus confirming the sheep and goats role in deterioration. On the other hand, very few farmers have admitted that they actually maintain their terraces or built new ones when they plant new olives. Only in the grazing land zone where small areas of new olives are planted, some have declared that they have maintained the old terraces of the previous land use (grazing land or oak savannas). We have nevertheless found terraces that are maintained very effi-ciently and professionally in the olive zone in fields close to roads, even if most olive terraces and especially those in remote and/or mountainous fields seem neglected. Arable lands on Lesvos were cultivated in plains or without terraces in mountains, except for grazing land areas where they were tilled and sowed with cereals or legumes used for animal feed