Now I can finally call myself an organic producer. Even though I’ve thought of converting to organic for more than fifteen years, various circumstances again and again led to great obstacles or doubts during the last years. In 2002, my Gruberhof farm in Naturno was swept away by a landslide. Later, we were exposed to the danger of apple proliferation and fire blight, two diseases in fruit production.

When I then wanted to take the big step towards organic, a very cold flowering period resulted in huge crop failures. So I had no financial safety at the decisive moment. It was a mental drama somehow when I consider that me and many other colleagues wanted to put our professor’s captivating lectures at the agricultural college into practice as soon as possible but were not able to do so for different reasons. This professor shaped our way of thinking. He told us about his time as an agricultural development worker in Brazil, of real sustainability in fruit production. He visited organic orchards with us, we counted useful insects and he explained us that there is no need to get nervous and to resort to the “weapons”, whenever we see a louse. I’ll never forget what he explained us about the balance between useful insects and pests.

Finally, the time has come to fulfil my dream. As an organic producer I take all my decisions through the eyes of my professor. It’s possible to apply his principles to virtually everything. No matter if I don’t use hail nets in certain places to allow the buzzard family living there to pounce on their quarry in my orchard without any risk of injury or when I get lots of earwigs from my brother’s orchards to fight woolly apple aphids in my orchards with their natural antagonists… I can constantly hear the wise words of my professor that whisper into my ear. They are of such great help.