Tomato sauce, colorful salad, sliced peppers, pickles or apple juice are just some of the products that filled the shelves of the warehouse of the Banja Luka Agricultural School this year, which were prepared by the hardworking hands of students and teachers of this school.
At affordable prices, all interested citizens can buy domestic products that were grown by the students months earlier, and then stored in jars and used for winter storage, every working day in the warehouse of the Agricultural School from 7 a.m. to 3 p.m.
Nemanja Jelić, professor of practical teaching, points out in an interview with “Nezavisne novine” that the production is under the watchful eye of fifteen agro and food engineers who control everything from seeds to the final product in a bottle or jar.
“The product is health-hygienic correct. Buyers can really expect a quality product, and there are buyers,” says Jelić and adds that in the countries of the European Union, including not so far away Slovenia, cities give free stands in the city center to schools so that they can market and sell their products.
And that the Banja Luka school has something to show, as evidenced by various and numerous products. In addition to processing fruits and vegetables and making juices, liqueurs and winter drinks, students in a small bakery workshop make pastries that are served in the school canteen. They also have a small cheese shop.
“We produce cheese in the winter. We have four types of cheese: semi-hard cheese, pie cheese, spreadable cheese and we made mozzarella. We have excellent cooperation with the Faculty of Technology from Banja Luka, and we also have cooperation with the Agricultural Cooperative Livač, so with their help we have visits from people from Italy during cheese production,” says Jelić.
Last year they made the craft beer “Maturant”, and according to the professor from whom the idea originated, the beer is of solid quality.
Bojan Bakal, director of the Banjaluka Agricultural School, points out that they, as an educational institution, had the goal and task of providing students with the highest quality practical teaching and for students to apply the knowledge gained through theory in practice.
“Guided by this policy, we managed to modernize a part of the workshops, to increase the capacities, and it was our desire from the very beginning that everything that we produce in our greenhouses, which our agricultural technicians produce as raw material, is later processed by our food technicians as part of practical classes and that we have the final product. We succeeded in that. We process about 90 percent of that raw material, and that was our goal from the very beginning,” says Bakal for “Nezavisne novine”.
In this way, students can see the complete work process, so for example, when juicing, they can see all the steps from washing and preparing the fruit for grinding, pressing, packing to pasteurization.
“From what the apple or the fruit we process gave us, quality, vitamins and minerals, we can turn it into juice, that is, into a quality product. Everything that can be processed from fruits and vegetables, we try to do it as part of our workshop”, says Bakal.
According to him, the Banja Luka Agricultural School offers citizens the opportunity to bring their own fruit and take home juice full of vitamins.
Part of the money that students earn by selling products is directed to student activities, i.e. to visits to fairs or to free meals in the school canteen.
“Certainly, we use a part of those funds to buy raw materials so that we can continue processing and other things,” says Bakal.
When it comes to plans for the future, Bakal points out that their goal is to increase greenhouse production and restore greenhouses.
“We try to follow trends, that is, to acquire new machines through certain projects. We want to build a newer workshop or rehabilitate an existing one for fruit and vegetable processing where we would automate part of the work,” he says for “Nezavisne novine”.
Although there are still students who want to work and study, Professor Jelić says that today’s children want to work a little, and that they have a lot of comfort in life, in work, in business, and that they have a lot of free time and a high salary. His wishes are that the Agricultural School has even more students in the future, that there are more interested children among them, and that the competent ministry and the community listen more to them.
“The parents themselves influence the children and keep them away from the hoe, from the field, from the field, from the greenhouse. Children today are different than they used to be,” Professor Jelić says honestly.
Source: 6yka.com
