By John Babb

Jadwiga Lopata sits on the stoop of her house, nestled in the foothills of the Biskidy mountains, gazing at Babia Gora, the highest peak. It is a view she took for granted as a child growing up in the area, and it was the thought of being unable to see the mountains again that persuaded Lopata to reconsider her life style and return to the village where she was raised.

Jadwiga Lopata

"None of us can make a living off agriculture; we all have second jobs," said a strawberry farmer, Stanislaw Nicieja.

The Financial and Commercial Pressures

Among the many problems, the Government is reducing subsidies, freer trade with the European Union is driving down food prices and the farmers cannot match the economies of scale of the large agrobusiness farms in Western Europe.

The pressure for Polish farmers to mimic western strategies are enormous. The Government is trying to force consolidation. Larger farms are offering quick cash for land and chemical companies are offering fertilizer at reduced cost – or no cost – to entice farmers to use western agricultural practices.

Polish farm

"This is our big treasure, the Polish countryside, this is what we can offer to our visitors, this really picturesque landscape still not so destroyed, nature not so poisoned, and good farmers who can in a very short time turn to organic production."

The Attraction of the Olden Days

Horses pulling plows, hayrides, straw mattresses, homemade cheese and sausages: Compared to western norms, the Polish farm is caught in a time warp circa 1920. There are no combines and few tractors. Nearly everything used by the farm is produced on the farm. It is like a Disneyland attraction, a tableau in a museum of civilization.

Hay ride on the farm

No such industry existed in Poland, so Lopata went off to the Netherlands to study the industry. It was during her time in the Netherlands that she co-founded the European Center for Ecological Agriculture and Tourism (ECEAT), which now has 60 members in 10 countries across Europe and North America. The center acts as a hub for farms in each country, handling the promotion of organic farms and providing training and support.

Applying Lessons Learned in the Netherlands

Lopata returned to Poland in 1993 to create an eco-tourism industry. People learn from example, so she knew she needed to start with one farm and get it working to convince others. Her first step was to rent a room on a farm near Zelana Gora, in southwestern Poland. She was attracted to the farm house because of its potential to be adapted for tourists. All that needed to be done was to clear out a few rooms. The farm house had three extra rooms that she convinced the owners to clean out and paint. They found an old bed in the attic that Grandmother used to sleep in and the stage was set.

Since she was rooming there, she could help train the farmers to accommodate guests. Lopata also publicized the farm through her contacts in the Netherlands. When tourists started to come, she invited neighboring farmers by to see what could be accomplished without a big investment. "They couldn't imagine that someone would come to a facility like they had, which is not true, because there are quite a large number of people who accept things like common toilets. I keep telling farmers: That's how we started."

Potato harvest on a family farm in Stryszow, Poland

"We are getting requests from all over Poland from different farmers who want to join," Lopata said. "I already have a collection of different addresses for the 2000 season."

The Selection Process

Lopata or her son and partner, Chris, visits applicants and assesses the facilities, giving advice on any changes needed to be made, stressing minimal investment. The farmers must then start down the road to organic production. To this end Lopata relies on a sister organization, Ecoland, which administers an internationally recognized certification program for organic produce. Ecoland provides the training and monitors the farms for a membership fee equivalent to $20 a year, and a certification fee based on the size of the farm. A 1- to 5-hectare farm will cost $37.50 to $45.

When a farm meets the requirements for at least half its products, the owners are ready to begin to train with ECEAT. Lopata does this by sending new farmers to an established farm. By being a guest at a farm, they get a first-hand understanding of what it takes to be a good host. The host farmer also teaches business skills, tourism, health and the philosophy behind sustainablity. Lopata believes this is the power of her program, that she persuades farmers by showing, not telling. When a farmer goes to a farm that is working, there is no arguing that it can't be done.

Tourists' dollars are, of course, of prime interest, and each year more visitors come to ECEAT farms. In 1993, there were 14 farms that attracted 400 visitors; last year there were 60 farms attracting more than 3,000. A brochure, also published and mounted on the Internet in Polish, English, Dutch and German, markets the farms.

Taxi please! Traditional rural transportation in the Zawoja community.

Most of the visitors are like Kees Veenstra, from the Netherlands. Veenstra and his wife have visited the same farm three times. "We just don't have anything like this in the Netherlands," said Veenstra. They spend their time either helping with the farm chores, biking or hiking through the nearby forest or visiting World War II sites in and around Krakow. For this they pay between $5 and $10 a night and an extra $5 to $10 for hot meals, modest sums but to some farmers an income too tempting to resist.

Keeping Farmers Focused on Their Land

One ironic problem is that some farmers are turning away from agriculture toward the easier money from tourism, which happened to one of the first farms Lopata had converted. "It really took me a lot of effort to convince them and promote them, and they escaped," Lopata said. She regards running simply a bed-and-breakfast in the country as short-sighted because it does not help preserve the land and is economically riskier. Lopata estimates that 2 to 3 percent of the farmers who go through Ecoland and ECEAT training defect.

Lopata cited some of the disadvantages to focusing exclusively on tourism and trying to link up farms through major travel agencies. The agencies, for example, insist on standard furniture in each room, or certain washroom facilities. But most farmers do not have any extra money for such investments so they must borrow, and loan rates in Poland are near 20 percent. Though a farmer may be able to charge more for a "fancier" room, the money goes towards interest payments.

With the ECEAT model, the money remains on the farm, though the association gets 10 percent of the tourist income to give the program a measure of financial independence. The money goes toward producing and mailing a monthly newsletter and promoting the farms. The rest of the funding is cobbled together through grants.

The Scramble for Funds

In the early stages it was difficult to get backing. "Everyone was looking to the other sources," Lopata said. "The Dutch Embassy asked, `What did you get from other sources?' We had only promises. I just told [the Dutch contact], `You know, someone has to start to give, otherwise everyone keeps asking, "Did you get from other sources?"' So she said O.K."

The Dutch will give 10,000 guilders this year. ECEAT will also get $8,000 from the American Embassy and $25,000 from the Rockefeller Brothers Fund. The center has yet to receive any money from the Polish Government, although it has contributed indirectly by covering travel costs and making space available at the local community office.

Apart from tourists, ECEAT farms are also attracting professional tour agencies and associations that want to contract some of her farms. Companies like SNP Natuurreizen, the biggest tourist organization in the Netherlands; Dobry Den, another Dutch agency, and Green Travel Network of the United States, are all following her lead. For Lopata, this is a measure of her success, and she sees it as an opportunity for her more advanced farms, where she can train and promote new farmers.

The number of tourists exposed to the benefits of organic agriculture and the family-farm lifestyle grows with the number of farms. They are the best promotion for the program, Lopata said. "Tourism is a very good tool to spread the idea of organic agriculture and it's working, really working in practice because people become convinced when they see the production, the atmosphere on the farms. They will speak about it to their friends, and so the circle gets bigger and bigger."

Lopata's largest organic farm is 150 hectares but she expects larger farms to get interested in organic production. "There are already big organic farms in Poland; one is even 1000 hectares. The way to convince farmers, though, is that they have to know about the possibility of selling organic food in Poland and E.U. countries. Permanent support from the Government would also be very important."

Now that Lopata's eco-tourism plan is beginning to take off, she has embarked on a more ambitious project: the eco-village. A year and a half ago she bought a small farm near Stryszow, her home, to create a village that will apply ecological solutions in education, tourism, energy use and waste treatment and disposal. The first step was to convince local farmers that organic farming can be profitable and that small-scale tourism is a viable way to supplement farm income. She first had to convince the community of her vision. "You have to make them feel that the ideas are coming from them."

A Crucial Battle Over a Hotel

This is how she was able to prevent Stryszow from following what she considered a destructive path. The local government was planning to build a resort on the shore of a nearby lake. "I inspired the other farmers and told them, when you have a hotel, there will be no income for you. The money will go to the investors in this hotel and only a few people will be employed," Lopata said. During this battle Lopata managed to get the town to incorporate ecology as a tenet of the community. She repeated the process she used to get the eco-farm program running: leading by example.

Lopata also offers training programs on ecological agriculture, eco-tourism and ecological life styles that emphasize the importance of protecting local cultures and economies. To help spread her ideas, she prints a local newspaper, and in the fall, she hopes to institute courses for children on ecology-related subjects. In the pipeline are plans to organize excursions to projects in the Netherlands and the United States where wind energy and solar energy are being harnessed successfully.

The 20 farmers of Stryszow who will be receiving guests for the first time this year, and who will become the nucleus of this larger project, are anxious to reap financial benefits from the program. If they happen to help the environment, all the better.

"Before Lopata came, we didn't see anything for the future but the forest expanding to reclaim the land," said Nicieja, the strawberry farmer. But there are 300 farms in the community, and Lopata hopes that when they see the successes of farmers like Nicieja this year, next year they will beat a path to her door.