We are thinking a lot at the moment about how to refine our vegetable production methods, and how to become more efficient (grow more with the same number of people), so we have been looking around for good examples of different production systems. We heard some time ago about Zrno Organic Farm in Croatia, which won the 2022 EU "Best organic Farmer of the year award" (see video link: Zrno organic farm), and this week we were fortunate enough to go and visit the farm as Zsámboki Biokert group of growers and owners.
Zrno organic farm is particularly interesting to us as they combine both "permanent bed bio-intensive vegetable production" (similar to us), with larger scale mechanised field vegetable production (which we are so far just experimenting with. It was fantastic to see how well planned and run the farm is, and not only growing a large diversity of crops, under these two growing systems, but also a huge range of other processed products (e.g. their own bakery, tofu and tempeh processing). We thank David Pejic and his farm team for the generous amount of time they gave to show us fully around. It was an inspiration for how we could develop in the future.
Above David, the owner amongst mushrooms, below permanent beds on the farm. (source: own photo)
Curly kale in tunnels (own photo)
Propagation tunnel (own photo)