YPARD Serbia media highlight – spreading the news

For a year now, YPARD Serbia has been trying to promote its achievements through web and TV media. That led us to many partnerships and support by young farmers and associations. By the end of April, we got a call from “eKapija” reporter, a very followed web portal in Serbia, to have an interview about YPARD Serbia and young farmers in Serbia.

With pointed questions from reporter Aleksandra Keki?, I'm giving you parts of the published text.

"YPARD helps young students to advance their knowledge about agriculture but also helps young farmers to find resources and information. Each country has its YPARD representative, and for Serbia, that's Julijana El Omari, who lives on a farm herself, in Orašac"

As she jokingly puts it, she accidentally became a YPARD country representative. Since she is an agricultural journalist, the former country representative had read her texts about young farmers and contact her through social networks and offer her a new country representative place. As she said, since she grew up on a farm, working on a field, stall or garden wasn't a mystery for her, neither problems young and older farmers face trough agricultural production.

-Unfortunately, because of the whole situation, not many young people see their future in farm living or even in Serbia. Because of that, I wanted to contribute to the idea that young naturally belong to the village, that agriculture lives and prosper with them and that we all have to realize that food production with environmental care is our greatest mission, sad El Omari for eKapija.

How exactly YPARD Serbia helps young farmers?

-After a lot of research and realizing the real position of young farmers in Serbia, YPARD Serbia in creating-projects-phase and making new partnerships. We are trying to raise awareness of people and government institutions about the importance of young in agriculture, by publishing many texts about the position of young farmers and advocating better support for young.

We are friends with Divac Foundation, which is helping young pupils in agriculture, we are connecting young farmers and firms or associations which can make their market access easier. For two and a half months we build web portal "Mladi u agraru", where we publish texts about agricultural production, new technologies, news about young farmers position here and in the world, positive stories about young farmers and their production, also about seminars and subsidies or financial support that are intended for them.

We call all young farmers to share with us their story, to give advice or to complain - so we would know how to help them as much as we can. We are working on and give our best with resources we have to help young in agriculture and make their position better - Julijana El Omari concluded."

We truly hope that with more media attention we will have more support among young farmers and institutions and that we will really contribute to better village life for young farmers in Serbia.

Picture credit: Julijana El Omari