Greeting the IFAJ Congress at our first dinner in Portoroz was the Minister of Agriculture, Forestry and Food, Iztok Jarc. He had a challenge because just prior to our dinner the weather changed completely and we had a drenching lightning storm. It forced the restaurant to make some major adjustments to the settings but finally we got everyone under cover and seated.
I spoke with the Minister after his comments. He pointed out that the weather was indicative of what it’s been like all year. He says they’ve been experiencing what he believes is related to climate change and that is severe storms that are very unusual. During the spring and summer he says they’ve had high winds and large hail storms that have in places just sheared trees in half.
The main agricultural commodities are livestock and he says milk is at the top and one they export. He says that although their ag industry is highly developed in terms of quality and technology, they are still behind in marketing and promotion since coming out of the former Yugoslavia. I asked him if he had a message for other farmers and he said, “Agriculture has proved to be a very important sector in general. Ag policy should be an important part of every government in the world.”
You can listen to my interview with Minister Jarc here: ifaj-08-jarc.mp3
IFAJ Congress 2008 Photo Album
AgWired coverage of IFAJ 2008 is sponsored by: 
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Our first stop on the Tour III group yesterday was KWB, a company that manufactures biomass heating systems. Basically these are various size heaters using wood chips or wood pellets for fuel.
On my first IFAJ tour stop I spoke with our host, Johann Scholler, Steirerfrucht. They are a fresh fruit packing facility. The main product is apples although they also handle pears and other fruit.
I think this is about the most time I’ve ever had in between posts from an event, including in Japan last year. Cindy and I are in Portoroz, Slovenia doing a little bit of catch up work in our hotel room. We were pretty much in and out of buses all day yesterday traveling down here from Graz, Austria. No time for anything and no internet access.
North America’s fertilizer market is increasing their reliance on imported urea. This reliance has caused Lange-Stegmann to step up and meet the challenge of providing high quality urea at reliable fast lead times. Another situation facing the world is finding a reliable and stable nitrogen source. AGROTAIN International is answering that challenge with its new Stabilized Nitrogen Center. This September, Lange-Stegmann will open the nation’s first and largest inland urea import terminal and AGROTAIN International will open the nation’s first urea manufacturing plant using phase modification.
He’s our outgoing IFAJ President and he’s also 
We saw some beautiful countryside today on our tour outside of Graz. There were actually 3 different tours going on simultaneously. Mine focused on specialty crops (make that apples). Cindy went on one focused on biomass and there was one on mountain farming.
Okay, so I was on the apple tour which included a stop at a fruit packing company and two different apple farms. At our first stop the farmer not only showed us his groves and discussed the various types of apples he grows but he also poured us a glass of wine made from apples. Later on he also poured some stronger apple liquor and even some elderberry wine!
This morning the IFAJ Star prizes for writing and photography were awarded. I don’t think any of the top winners were attending though so we had stand-ins to take their awards home. I’ll try to find a list of them to publish later.
During the morning session here at the IFAJ Congress we were presented with the results of an online survey conducted for IFAJ by OEKonsult, Communication & Consulting.