The most important thing in Slovenian agriculture is that the food is local – customers appreciate that. The government has a campaign to encourage more people to buy local. We now have a label that guarantees that a product has been produced in Slovenia, not imported and repackaged. This is popular with consumers even though local is more expensive. We have higher production costs than competing countries because while our weather is good for food production, we have many unpredictable storms and the average farm size is just 6ha.

My mother and brother work full-time on the farm, while my father and I are part-time. My father has a job off-farm and I am working on my master thesis in economy.

We have 6ha of eating apples (Gala, Elstar, Golden Delicious, Jonagold, Idared and Braeburn), but we don’t produce a lot because quality is more important. Normally we sell them to one of the large companies that will sell them on using their own label. However, this year there was a lot of damage done in May which was unusually cold and everything was frozen. The insurance company estimated that 80% of our apples have been damaged so we will just sell the 20% that survived at home on the farm. Insurance will only give us a small percentage of our loss, which will not even be enough to cover our costs. Our 3ha of walnuts are not really affected because the trees are just 13 years old and will not be ready to harvest until next year.

I am involved in the Slovenian young farmers, ZSPM, and we work with the Government’s Chamber of Agriculture and Forestry on a strategy for young farmers. The five-year plan is written and signed, and at the moment we are actioning the 30-item agenda. For example, one of the actions is to teach children both in primary and secondary education where their food comes from.

Our government listens to us and it is not hard to connect with them. We run an on-farm innovation competition, in conjunction with the Chamber of Agriculture, and this year the president of Slovenia will host the final at his palace.

ZSPM is working on a project which will see only food produced by Slovenian young farmers used at government events.

Our organisation is also working on a project to connect farmers and relief workers, which is like the Farm Relief Service you have in Ireland.