Nikolina is a pharmacist raising sheep and poultry with holistic management principles in Vojakovac, Križevci, with her husband, two small children and three employees. Her market is based on personal relationships with customers. She is a big promoter of regenerative farming.
Bruna is an assistant professor in Zagreb University’s Faculty of Agriculture. She and her husband own a family farm in Vojakovac, Križevci (NE Croatia), raising mostly indigenous cows, pigs and turkeys with holistic management methods. They have two children.
Initially we developed Njam-Njam (Yum Yum) cooperative – five farms all from the same area. Two biodynamic vegetable producers, one with pasture-fed milking cows, one with various poultry, and one with cows, poultry, pigs, sheep and quails. All animals are free range. We are inspired by Salatin’s methods. Our properties are not big, 2-5 ha each and we have more land elsewhere for hay and grain production. We produced and sold lots of primary and secondary products (from marmalades to organic cosmetics) and developed a very good market in half of our country, selling our products through a web app and delivering fresh to customers’ doors once a week. In all of it, we learned by doing.
In 2019 we applied to be the Croatian Hub for holistic management. Since the new year Njam- Njam cooperative fell apart. This happened for several reasons but fundamentally a basic lack of management, coordination and knowledge led to exhaustion and conflict. We (Nikolina and Bruna) continue working and delivering goods together and the rest of the crew continue working on their own. We learned a lot from what happened and four of us are now in training at the Savory Institute for holistic management, to become future trainers. Nikolina visited Salatin’s farm as part of Savory bootcamp in USA in January. We want to create a Croatian Regenerative Agriculture Centre (CRAC) and arrange it as cooperative to work on changing the mindset and status of farmers in Croatia for the purpose of regenerating the soil and the ecosystem in general. We have been dealing with that working plan and hope and believe we can make arrangements on an EU level with the other Hub candidates of the Savory Institute for some very powerful projects and capital investments for real change.