Trusted Partner Program: Growing fresh salad for Kočevje's kids with Mateja Radi

Fresh food for the local community

Mateja's greenhouses supply fresh vegetables to kindergartens, schools and the local market around Kočevje. Walk down her rows and you'll see Chinese cabbage, several kinds of lettuce, chard, celery and beans, all grown on drip irrigation and mulch. Children in local schools and kindergartens are eating vegetables picked only a short drive away, which shows how much local production matters.

Step one: upgrading what's already there

The first stage of our work together is upgrading the technology in Mateja's existing greenhouses. We're improving how these greenhouses are monitored and controlled, so she gets steadier conditions and more reliable harvests, and spends less time on manual work.

Step two: a new, fully automated salad greenhouse

Next, Mateja will order a new greenhouse built just for salad production, with a fully automatic setup. Climate, irrigation and nutrition will all be controlled automatically and tuned to the needs of leafy greens. That means:

• Steady quality and supply all year for schools, kindergartens and the market

• Better use of water and nutrients

• Less manual work, so Mateja can focus on growing and on her customers

• Room to grow as local demand for fresh, home-grown food goes up

"When I harvest in the morning, I know that by lunchtime the children in our kindergartens and schools will be eating it. That's why quality and reliability matter so much to me. With ZeeQuest we're first making my existing greenhouses smarter, and the new automated salad greenhouse will let me deliver fresh, crisp lettuce all year round. There's less guesswork and less manual work, and I have more time for what I love: growing good food for my community."
— Mateja Radi, grower, Kočevje

Why it matters

Through the Trusted Partner Program, ZeeQuest wants to show that modern greenhouse technology isn't only for big industrial producers. Family farms and local growers can use it too, and they're often the ones who feed our communities most directly. Mateja's project is a good example: a strong local grower, a clear market, and technology that helps her reach it.

We'll follow the project as it moves forward and share updates when the new salad greenhouse is built.

Are you a grower who wants to modernise your production? Get in touch with us to find out about the ZeeQuest Trusted Partner Program.