FARM LIKE A HERO EXPERIENCE: David Pejić, HR

Okay. Welcome to a new episode of Farm Like a Hero. I'm Richard Perkins. Today I'm here with David Page who I filmed with on YouTube back in November 2019 at the training he invited me to run over in Croatia. David's taking over responsibilities for his. He's now the CEO of his parents complex businesses that they've built up as the pioneers of macrobotics, sustainability and organic food in Croatia in the last three decades. Zerno Organic Farm produces vegetables in both the biointensive and the field scale production and has a bakery and food processing kitchen on the farm as well as the Farm to Table restaurant in the capital. And alongside that, in the complexity of their businesses, they also have a wholesale organic food distribution company and 16 shops around the company as well as a book publishing company and employ around 10, 200 people. So David, thanks so much for joining us again today for the tour.

It's a pleasure to be here. Thank you for inviting me.

Nice to see you again. And maybe you could tell us a bit about like a lot of viewers will have seen that video and if they haven't, I guess they should go back and watch that to get a real good visual look around all of that. But maybe you could tell us a bit about your journey growing up in that, I guess and what's been your journey from youth back to being like taking on the responsibilities now. And did you expect to do that always?

Yeah. That's an interesting topic. To a certain degree in the back of my head I always sort of knew that I wanted to be a part of my, the family business. Right. But I would definitely say that the way it happened I could have not foreseen in terms of what, what my participation is today. So, you know, my parents basically started their business activities as I was born in terms of trade of organic products. They started with education and that was happening before me. But you know, the trade aspect, the store aspect, all of those things sort of started as I was, you know, really growing up and I was very present basically, you know, a lot of the early activities, even as a, you know, a toddler or something, at the seminars and things like that. So the people, the early collaborators and the people that my parents, you know, the community that they built in those early days of the business, that was in more, in many ways my family in some ways. Right. And so I think in those early days that's where this sort of, you know, this sort of, I would, I would call it like this, you know, vision, you know, captured in my mind in Terms of like, it was just something that I always felt a part of.

Right.

But growing up and, you know, my parents, they didn't want me to just sort of, you know, just, you know, start working in the company and in the business without, you know, really being tested myself or really pursuing my own sort of direction or something like that. So after high school I basically went, you know, in a completely different direction and on my own. I, I, you know, studied film and TV production in the United States and then took on philosophy as a double major early on in that study and then realized that I don't really enjoy the work style or the lifestyle of film production. And so I did my master's in philosophy at Cambridge and that was the end of. And. But I also knew that I didn't really want to pursue an academic career. It was way too passive for me personally. But I did, you know, I did carry a lot of lessons that, you know, I learned from film and especially from philosophy into my later work in particular. I actually think it's worthwhile mentioning, you know, in philosophy I was, I was really fascinated by so called system philosophies. Those are not really done anymore. Today philosophy is a very analytic, reductive discipline. Like you're expected to focus on a particular issue and then really develop that particular issue to the point of even. I would call, I would sometimes call it like even, you know, like ridiculous detail. Like it's not to the point where it's not really useful for anything anymore. But I was more fascinated by, I guess, more historical philosophies that focused on building a system. Right. And I think, you know, although I could, couldn't have foreseen that I would be involved with agriculture or farming later in my life, I think, you know, just as those, those types of philosophical systems that try to account for complexity. That's a lesson. Like studying those really helped with running a farm.

But in any case, David, I want to ask you. Sorry to interrupt you. We talked about this a lot. I remember in the car when I was over there, but I'd forgotten which college. Did you read it? I was curious.

I was at Robinson College. It's one of the, one of the newer colleges. But since I did my mphil, which is like a research master's at Cambridge, it wasn't really. I only, you know, my dorm was at Robinson, but I wasn't, you know, really in the tutorship of the college. It was more of a sort of like an independent research program. It's sort of, it's. It's in, in broad terms, it's sort of like a. It's a leeway into a PhD study. You can basically continue on to a PhD.

So you skipped out of that. You didn't want to do the PhD.

The great thing about this program, about this was that it was a one year program. So it was very intense and it is very intense, but you don't really commit too much time, but you do independent research. So it's sort of like. And then when you do a PhD, you obviously, you know, do independent research over a very long period of time. And I admired that a lot. But for me personally, it was just. I knew that it was too static for me and too hermetic as well. And also I realized that if I pursued that direction, this was a funny thing that I realized the other day, I would have probably completed my PhD this year or like a couple of months ago, which just would just, you know, like visualizing everything that has been done in the last four years of my professional work. It's just unimaginable. Yeah, it's. It's unimaginable. Really. Yeah. So, yeah, the. The development of the family business in 2010, my parents, they knew and they, you know, they really wanted to pursue, you know, this idea of, you know, vertical integration. They didn't want to stop at trade or retail. Not only because, you know, those were not the original activities that they started with, as they started with, you know, education and cooking workshops and so on, but also because they knew that from a professional business standpoint, you know, it's much easier to replicate stores and trade than it's compared to production.

Right.

Production is much harder to figure out much. It requires, in some terms, more investment in.

Requires highly nuanced and. Yeah, in that way.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So. So the idea of the farm, the Zirna farm, you know, it was founded back in the late 80s and the lady that founded it and ran it, she was in the community that my, you know, general community that my parents were in as well. But then in 2010, we, my parents basically or the company bought the farm business. And then my father ran it for about five, six years from that point. And then when I finished my time at Cambridge, I basically went into it and it was not maybe, you know, like my, it sounds like a, like a cute story, but the reality of it is that, you know, my parents asked me like, you know, what would you want to do in the business? And I never.

Sorry, just to interrupt you again. Were you making the conscious choice to Come back into it then.

Yeah.

As opposed to them asking you.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's a nice way to wrap that up. Yeah. It was a conscious choice. And I think that's very important, I think, actually, because for, you know, my particular context, because I, at that point, I knew that there would never be any regrets or what ifs, you know, like, I did my thing, I explored it. You know, I had, you know, different sort of avenues of pursuing it further, both film and philosophy, and I made a conscious choice to do this. So there's no, Like, I cannot, you know, there's. I cannot hide behind something like, oh, I didn't have a choice, or I was, you know. No, I made a choice like, this is, you know, clear. This is my responsibility. It's not, you know, it's not anyone else's. But in any case, I asked, like, you know, I replied to that question of what I want. What would you like to do? I said, like, what is most needed? Right. Where. Where would I be most needed? And Zerno Organic Farm was the. Was the obvious answer.

Mm. So what's that? How would you describe your role today?

So I'm the CEO of the company that operates the farm and the restaurant that is tied to the farm and carries the same brand. I oversee processes, operations, financials, and all most aspects of the business.

Yeah. And how would you say that? Like, something that's always impressed me deeply with you, David, is just the. I don't know what the right descriptor would be like, the stoic kind of presence you have and the responsibility you've taken on is huge. And I think if anyone goes back to that YouTube video or certainly. I know farmer's friends made a video early in this year, didn't they? That's a lot more beautiful cinematography. And I think people can see quite clearly from that. It's a dynamic, complex business ecosystem that you're sort of in. And I'm guessing your upbringing within that means you have, you know, a. Know how of the workings of that and from your parents, obviously, that allow you to navigate that complexity much easier than anyone external could possibly do.

Yeah, yeah, that's. That's true.

Is that a good analysis on a simple level?

Yeah, I think. I think it is.

Well, I was leading on to asking, like, how. How was that coming back from quite different studies and looking out into the world in a very different way to coming back into that role overseeing lot of people who have worked there, obviously a long time, and this whole process and having your own inspiration, ideas about the farm. Like, I can imagine that be quite overwhelming. Right. But you seem very centered and very well measured with it all.

It might appear that way. And I think to a degree it is true. I did have, of course, you know, in the first moments I had, you know, a lot of doubts about my capabilities. Like, I remember, you know, coming from Cambridge, I was, you know, I had a lot of worries that I wouldn't, you know, how would I do this or that or how would I encompass this or, you know, what do I have in my previous experience to really, you know, show for. But somehow throughout my upbringing, like involuntarily and indirectly, I say that because I know that my parents didn't want me to have this sort of mindset of responsibility. In fact. Yeah, yeah, I know they were explicitly worried at different moments in time about, you know, me just being so burdened by all of it, you know, the business of it. You know, I was. But it just, it was something that was, you know, something that was a reality for me. And, and, and that's just sort of grew with, with time. And I, I know explicitly the day, you know, there were, you know, times in my, you know, childhood when they would, you know, just like, be worried that I wasn't, you know, like, as relaxed as they thought that, you know, other kids are or, you know, or, you know, it was just sort of. There was this, I guess there was this sort of layer, you know, that was just in, you know, there. That was tied to the businesses and things like that. And then I personally. You mentioned the word stoic, but I personally have, I have been inspired by stoics throughout my. Even before my philosophical studies. But I, you know, read them all, in fact, and have been quite inspired. And in my personal sort of life philosophy, I have found that a lot of anxiety can be short circuited if a person doesn't. Doesn't run after the questions, question of, you know, what do I want or what, you know, those, those questions, basically, at least for me personally, they lead into a dead end. I found that you can short circuit them if you ask about what needs to be done right, you know, what is required, what is, you know, what ought to be, you know, you know, and things seem much clearer when you. When I ask myself that question, you know.