![]() We grow so many different crops, make so many products and work with so many different people that there are new challenges every day. My day-to-day life looks different every day. Then, six years ago, I dedicated myself completely to our farm. And worked on my dream of my own organic farm. In parallel, I organized the vegetable garden for the UN staff and did an additional degree in sustainable food systems at Columbia University. After that I worked in New York for the UN and helped develop strategies to improve coordination within the organization on action on climate change. I then worked for a few years in Rome for the United Nations Agricultural Organization and the World Food Program on climate change and sustainable agriculture. Many of the people who still live in the village are bitter and hopeless.Īt that time, I began to think that one day I would like to change something about all of this, and to preserve the traditions and diversity. Hardly any fruit and vegetables are grown anymore. Today there are only wheat, corn and sunflower fields around the village as far as the eye can see. Of the dozens of young people, who used to populate the village square on warm summer nights. Nothing else was left of the farm, where once half the village was employed - only memories of all the fruit and vegetables that were being produced and exported in the village, of the hundreds of sheep, water buffaloes and goats that grazed in the adjacent nature reserve. The cows' name tags were still laying on the floor. ![]() On my first visit to Todorovo I went to the former cooperative cow barn. There the changes have been particularly drastic and dramatic. I have long been fascinated by the political, socio-economic and ecological changes in Eastern Europe, especially in rural areas. After that, the village was named after him and was henceforth called Todorovo. He had the first grain mill in the village, was mayor at some point and was shot in 1945 because he didn't want to reveal where his sons were hiding - they were partisans. The last farmer in my family was my great-grandfather on the Bulgarian side. ![]() As a child I went to Bulgaria once a year. My mother is German, my father Bulgarian. I studied political science in Berlin and Moscow. For me, agriculture is a new passion that inspires and challenges me every day.
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