Buy local in times of crisis, we will all be better

25. March 2020. Urednik

Buy local in times of crisis, we will all be better off family farms that until recently depended on the markets, after the ban on sales at the stands can now use the direct sales platform to drive products to customers at a point or in front of the door.

The closure of markets and smaller shops will be a major blow to family farms in Croatia. There are officially about 100,000 of them, but there are about 30,000 fewer more productive people who place their goods on the market.

According to the Život family farm association, about 20 per cent depends on market sales, 30 per cent supplies them to stores, about 10 per cent sells to wholesalers, five per cent sends goods for export, and the remaining 35 per cent are small family farms that sell goods. sell only locally They will suffer, fortunately, the slightest blow.

The ban on selling in the markets will certainly create big problems for those who depended on the markets, but there is hope for them as well – says Marko Kozjak from the company VeeMee.

Buy local in times of crisis, we will all be better - VeeMee

It is an online platform that brings together about 1,200 family farms from all over Croatia. Through it, customers can connect directly with producers, arrange food delivery to a point or in front of a house.

Kozjak says that the search engine on the platform is more active than ever, with 50,000 views a day. You can find milk and meat, fruits and vegetables, eggs, oils, honey, jams, everything a refrigerator needs and with a known origin.

The ban on intercity traffic does not mean that family farms cannot transport goods from their place to someone else, say Kozjak and the secretary of the Život association, Jurica Jašinski. The family farm needs to fill in an online confirmation certificate, a pass that says exactly what and where it is driving, and translate the goods with it.

In this way, family farms that have so far only sold in markets can be organized. Such is the family farm Honorate Šopec from Pisarovina, which sold cheese and cream, eggs at the Jarun market.

– We can’t anymore. That food is decaying now, there is plenty of it. I don’t know what to do next – they say.

Kozjak invites all farmers who have not yet done so to join the platform. It can also be used to transport their goods to customers. All with passes. He is disappointed, he says, that the Ministry of Agriculture is now announcing its agro-platform, which it must create from scratch, even though VeeMee has been offering them cooperation for three years.

Kozjak says that with the Ministry, they can quickly expand the network of delivery of products from family farms throughout Croatia.

He adds that they already have good cooperation with the City of Zagreb, Zagreb and Varaždin County, whose more than 200 family farms are on the VeeMee platform. Food that has hitherto gone to markets and to facilities in markets, even restaurants, will no longer perish, and customers will receive a local, fresh product.

Kozjak also points out that they asked the authorities for a list of family farms that have sold in the markets so far, in order to enter them on the VeeMee platform. The Život association says that it is not clear to them whether the ban on moving between places means that the farmer will not be able to go from his residence to a field in another municipality.

We asked about it, no one has given us an explanation so far. The question is also whether he will be allowed to go for raw materials for production somewhere outside the residence, and the like.

Jašinski invites family farms to advertise on the Facebook page of the Život association, and offer their products there so that someone, locally, can contact them and buy them.

Read more at: https://www.24sata.hr/news/kupujmo-domace-u-vrijeme-krize-bit-ce-nam-svima-bolje-683105 – 24sata.hr

Author: Bojana Mrvoš Pavić, Tuesday, 03/24/2020.

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