Since September 2024, the EUTA team, led by Steve Quarrie and Ratko Bojović, together with project coordinator Milena Micevski, has embarked on a series of visits to 13 farms across Serbia, from Belgrade to Valjevo, Ub, Mionica, and Zrenjan. The farms include both conventional and organic producers of various fruits, vegetables, salad crops as well as grapes for wine production.
These visits are part of Task 6.2 – Action Learning Behavioral Change Pilot Sites with Professional Growers within the Hort2thefuture project, aimed at supporting growers in testing and co-creating innovations in horticulture.
Understanding Growers’ needs and openness to innovation
The atmosphere during grower visits has been really welcoming, with growers openly sharing their experiences, concerns, and aspirations.
During our interactions, the EUTA team discovered that most small-scale horticultural growers do not use decision-support tools, apart from meteorological data, in collaboration with local extension services. While many acknowledge the potential benefits of innovative tools, the perception of high costs remains a barrier. However, there is no resistance to innovation amongst these growers, and indeed they are willing to explore new solutions.
For conventional vegetable growers, such as those from Sovljak near Ub, the use of peat is significant – up to 10,000 liters annually, including substrates from our partner Pindstrup. In contrast, organic growers use only a few hundred liters of substrates approved by the Ministry of Agriculture. Nonetheless, all growers have expressed willingness to test peat-free alternatives developed by Pindstrup.
Also, all growers have shown interest in analysing soil health using the tea bag test, a protocol developed by Steve Quarrie to assess soil microbial activity. EUTA is also gradually acquiring relatively cheap decision-support equipment, such as soil moisture probes and automatic irrigation control systems together with protocols, for growers to test.
Their enthusiasm for collaboration is promising, as they remain interested in participating in co-creation with Hort2thefuture’s innovations.