During an interesting low budget press trip, organised by the Slovenian Guild of Agricultural Journalists from 4th to 7th of September, the small group of ENAJ journalists witnessed great examples of transforming traditional farming to modern Slovenian agriculture.
Visit Dušan Kos and Brigita Horgan’s farm focused on pumpkins cold-pressed oil, shows how a combination of hard work, good ideas and EU grants for young farmers with the support of the Chamber of Agriculture can result in success.
We also saw how innovative Toni Kukenberger converted his traditional family farm into an organic one, which nowadays produces cheese and a wide range of other milk-based products – all of it from twice a day milked swiss brown cows while they are enjoying time on beautiful meadows.
The Orchard sector had inspiring ambassadors on our Slovenian tour too. Marie and Franz transform their apples into whatever is possible to make with them: dried slices, jam, juices, schnapps, candies, mustard etc.
We were lucky to be a part of the best local products show in Ptuj, called “Dobrote slovenskih kmetij” seeing how they are rising in quality, how the most successful receive a gold medal, well appreciated by consumers and the market in general.
We met Roman Žveglič, president of the National Chamber of Agriculture, who strongly promotes family farmers and had an opportunity to find out more, asking questions to Jože Podgorše, Slovenian Agriculture Minister, who is proud of organic farms development.