Joy Carter Crosby
SEPF Editor
Sometimes you have to travel halfway around the world to realize just how much farmers have in common. Recently, I had the opportunity to travel to Croatia for the International Federation of Agricultural Journalists (IFAJ) Congress. This year’s meeting was especially meaningful as IFAJ celebrated its 70th anniversary. More than 20 members of the Agricultural Communicators Network joined agricultural journalists from around the world for several days of farm tours, industry visits and conversations about the challenges facing agriculture and the future of AI.
Croatia was a beautiful setting, but it was the farmers and their stories that left the biggest impression on me. Our tours took us to farms, processing facilities and other agricultural businesses, providing a look at the diversity of Croatian agriculture. While the crops, landscapes and farming practices were different from what we see in the Southeast, many of the challenges sounded remarkably familiar.
Croatian farmers worry about the weather. They worry about regulations. They worry about prices and markets. Sound familiar?
No matter where they farm, producers are working to make the most of their resources while dealing with factors beyond their control.
One of the things I enjoyed most was hearing directly from farmers about how they are adapting to those challenges. Some have joined cooperatives, pooling resources to strengthen their operations. We also saw farmers using European Union grants to invest in technology, including robots.
You can sit at a table with someone who speaks a different language and discover they are trying to solve many of the same problems you hear about at home. You can visit a farm on the other side of the world and realize that the people working that land have many of the same hopes and frustrations as the farmers you know down the road.
That’s what makes agricultural journalism so rewarding to me. We get to tell those stories. We meet people who may live and farm differently than we do and face different regulations and markets. But somewhere along the way, we usually find something that connects us.
Farmers are farmers, no matter where you go. And sometimes you have to travel halfway around the world to appreciate just how true that is.
By Joy Crosby