Anto Jurić is especially proud of his stevia seedlings.
He is known as the Millionaire from Kosnica. Anto Jurić has a farm of 5,000 square metres, and all gardeners from Zagreb know very well that they should get the seedlings at Jurić’s farm if they want to have good tomatoes, bell peppers, lettuce or other vegetables and herbs, reports Večernji List on May 23, 2016.
“I am not sure when we started doing this, because we always had the seedlings. Even when I was a kid I worked with cultivation and with planting of the seedlings”, says Jurić. His family farm has been registered for 30 years ago. He has had help from his wife and children, but also from his employees. Jurić says he needed to employ other people because he transports seedlings to Rijeka, Mali Lošinj, Split, while his plants are being sold in agricultural pharmacies, in the shopping malls and at almost all the fairs.
“We work so hard because there is no other way to survive”, says Jurić. He wakes up every morning at 4 am. The seedlings have to be watered, and in the winter the greenhouses have to be heated. But despite all this, his farm is not immune to natural disasters. “We have recently thrown away 400 crates full of tomatoes. A week before they are sold, seedlings have to be taken out of the greenhouse in order to adapt to external conditions and get stronger. We have taken them out and the frost has destroyed them”, the entrepreneur says, adding that it pays off to work with seedlings compared to the other areas of agriculture.
His family is especially proud of their stevia seedlings, and they produce in quantities of about 200,000 every year. “We are the biggest growers of this natural sweetener in Croatia”, Jurić says. They are especially focused on the seeds they plant and on the types of fruits and vegetables for which they grow the seedlings. The old varieties are now popular again, but they also keep testing various new combinations.
