YPARD Serbia- Becoming a source of information for young Serbian farmers!

At the beginning of March 2019, YPARD Serbia with the support from YPARD Europe has launched a new web site “Mladi u agraru/Youth in agriculture” with the aim of providing information on young farmers in Serbia, challenges they face, news about young farmers in the country, subsidies, stories about their production, how they face climate change, growing organic food, ecology.

This website was created with the purpose of providing services for youth in agriculture, representing a unique place where Serbian youth can find all sort of information they need in every aspect of agriculture in their own language!

This new website is a revamp of the old YPARD Serbia blog but keeping the name Mladi u agraru, because we wanted to make it easier for our readers to find us. The most important thing is that the whole site is in the Serbian language. Why? Because, the language barrier is still a big obstacle for our readers who do not have a good understanding of English (best example are the blog post about YPARD Serbia activities that are in English, which are the least read – 5 or 6 views). Also, as the YPARD Serbia representative and a journalist, I used my skills to provide information in the most professional way I can.

The website contains lots of interesting information on Crop production, Fruit production, Livestock breeding, Vegetable farming, Organic production, Beekeeping, as well as Opportunities and news for youth in agriculture and a specific section dedicated to YPARD!

For now, the most read publications are on fruit production and vegetable farming (from 300 views to 1000 views / which is amazing!). This monitoring gives us much information like, what are young farmers the most interested in, also that there might be more fruit or vegetable producers than the producers in other branches of agriculture. We look forward to obtaining lots of insightful information like these through this website.

The website highlight the kind of information young farmers are interested in and need, so we can take measures to give them the best help possible, as well as to help them increase their production in the best way.

The information we publish is on the latest news in agriculture that affects youth. Opportunities that can increase or provide a stable start for beginners, also how to protect their crops from diseases, how others grow food in foreign countries that can be implemented in Serbia’s land….and also, what new in YPARD field. YPARD Serbia intends to publish content on the website almost every day so people can see that we are active!

To increase the interest in our work, we have Facebook a page Mladi u agraru (we share our texts in all sorts of fb pages), you can found us on Twitter (@agricultural journalist), LinkedIn and Instagram (mladi_u_agraru). Social networks are a very important part of our mission because young farmers and professionals and those who want to be one only can a safe and reliable space on social networks to obtain relevant information. We especially, need to mention Instagram (mladi_u_agraru), as in a very short while we have 3 times more followers than the ones we follow! Also, very positive comments!

In the last couple of weeks, we have had two YPARD Serbia members that are writing for our website. One is a professional in cattle breeding, and the other is in the fruit production field. We have to notice that text by our fruit production member made very good view monitoring and excellent comments on social media. And I was personally amazed by how one young man can think in such a mature way about agriculture, fruit production and village life in Serbia!

The most important thing is that the website has gotten great feedback for the first two months, much better than we expected! One of the most important needs for young farmers in Serbia, based on our research, was the need for a source of good information and education (about every part of the production, subsidies and financially support). As YPARD Serbia we know we have made the right step by creating this web site.

YPARD Serbia sees this website as a tool that has already and will continue to open the space to create more opportunities and new partnerships that can provide us new projects that can really make a huge impact on young in agriculture.

Our goal is to make the position of young farmers in Serbia better and we will not give up!

Picture credit: Julijana El omari