Price Dispersion and Income Risk at Greenhouse Vegetable Auctions in Ierapetra, Crete: Implications for Smallholder and Family-Farm Resilience

Smallholder and family farms underpin Mediterranean horticulture, yet their incomes are exposed to price risk because they sell as price-takers in opaque channels. In Ierapetra, Crete, greenhouse vegetables are traded at several independent physical auctions. This study quantifies within-venue price risk using 6281 product-day observations (daily minimum, maximum and mean prices) for six greenhouse products, November 2019–May 2026. Four indicators are computed per product-day: within-day relative spread, daily price change, coefficient of variation and a downside income-at-risk gap. Dispersion is compared across products against a reference band built from the within-day spreads of the three higher-priced products (p25–p75), a common descriptive yardstick drawn from the data themselves. On the same day, the highest price exceeds the lowest by 23% on average, and by above 100% on extreme days. A low-end seller earns 16–19% below the daily mean for commodities. The contrasts survive restriction to actively traded days and comparison at equal price levels. All series come from a single operator: the analysis therefore documents dispersion within one venue, and the contribution of fragmentation across venues remains open. Price risk is treated as a determinant of farm resilience rather than a measure of it; a unified, transparent digital auction is assessed as a design-conditional adaptation, its effect hinging on buyer participation, product representation and grading.