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But in the mountainous northern regions of the Austrian province of Styria, some entrepreneurial farmers are not only making a living by farming on the alpine pastures, they’re also revitalizing rural communities and keeping ancient traditions alive. 
Slovakia is formerly part of Czechoslovakia, which broke apart January 1 1993 following its Velvet Revolution. Its name, to the untrained ear, sounds a lot like that of Slovenia, a former Yugoslav republic in the same part of Europe that we’ll be visiting later on during this trip. Austria is a nation of coffee lovers – on average, Austrians spend 356 million Euros (almost CDN $570 million) on coffee per year. In a nation of just over 8 million, that’s a lot of coffee per person per year. And despite the fact that the world price for coffee beans has more than doubled since 2004, leading to price increases at the consumer level, Austria’s coffee lovers aren’t letting that stop them from enjoying their java. |   | ||||
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Much of Austria is covered in pastoral mountainside fields – beautifully scenic but largely unsuited for agriculture.
That’s what organizers of the pre-congress tour of the International Federation of Agriculture Journalists (IFAJ) in Slovakia are aiming to prove to the delegates that arrived in this tiny country on the eastern edge of the European Union yesterday.