Marcin raises pasture-fed beef cattle on a family farm with his father and brother in the west of Poland. He is passionate to see agroforestry spread throughout Poland. He was one of the initial 60 representatives of the BOND Project.
I wrote an action plan as part of the BOND Project, in which I wanted to set up an association for pasture-fed cattle in Poland.
In December 2018 we founded our organisation. Meeting with the other farmers, the association’s main goal became building a market for our pasture-fed meat. The first thing to do was make a quality system for this type of beef because in Poland there wasn’t one.
There are a lot of young members of our association who are passionate to see change and willing to work for it, but it is difficult during the busy seasons on the farms. We only have the wintertime to meet and work with computers, so a lot of the work came to me. Spreading leadership has been a challenge.
We hope our quality system will be completed this winter and we will be able to start selling pasture-fed meat through our association.
COVID-19 has obviously caused us some challenges, but this year I have submitted a paper to the Ministry of Agriculture to include agroforestry in Poland’s agricultural development plan. Changing agricultural policy can be very complicated and I invited 20 other large farming organisations to help me put together policy suggestions. The paper will be adopted in 2022 and funds will be available from the EU budget.