Mara Bergmane

Mara Bergmane is building a network of "Health Farms" to provide an encompassing preventative health model for Latvians, a new holistic ecohealth tourism destination for Europeans, and an economic enterprise for Latvian farmers.

Through the use of traditional farming practices and the preservation of cultural values regarding health and the environment, Mara is using Latvia's rich past to benefit the health and future well-being of people throughout Central Europe. She is building a network of farms dedicated to organic farming, healthy living, and preventative health care. Her farm system participants will revitalize invaluable traditional practices by incorporating these techniques and values into current farming practices. Mara uses the Health Farm model (and brand name) to attract visitors searching for an ecohealth tourism experience. Although visitors come to enjoy the rural lifestyle, traditional relaxation practices, and good food, they also gain a deeper understanding of nutrition, organic farming, and healthcare. The Health Farms demonstrate healthy diets, food combinations, the benefits of organic food, and healthy lifestyle activities. The tourism experience also encourages a larger awareness of the natural world and the need for environmental protection.
The Health Farm system will work as an integrated supply network to provide a range of useful products. This will allow locals and visitors to access a full range of local organic products, and so raise the demand for locally grown organic foods. The Health Farm system will also offer important benefits to rural communities, where 30 percent of Latvians live. Marginalized rural farmers will gain new possibilities for income sources, helping them compete with large farms and within the context of the EU. Increased incomes will improve living standards in rural areas and provide more local jobs.

Mara's model addresses three key problems: the deterioration of the health standards of Eastern Europeans, environmental degradation, and the decreasing economic opportunities for farmers.
Health levels in Latvia and Eastern Europe are significantly lower than in the rest of Europe. The prevalence of chronic diseases, substance abuse, the overuse of pharmaceuticals, and pesticide use all contribute to the problem. Eastern Europeans suffer from high rates of chronic diseases; Latvians suffer from heart disease seven times more that EU citizens and contract cancer twice as often as their EU neighbors. Unhealthy lifestyles involving substance abuse are large contributors to Latvia's problem. The consumption of alcohol rose by over six times per person between 1920 and 1985. About 63 percent of male Latvians are smokers, and the consumption of high tar content unfiltered cigarettes causes a high incidence of smoking-related illnesses like emphysema, lung cancer, bronchial asthma, and bronchitis. Monoculture and poverty have led to a dietary pathology, exacerbated by the overuse of pharmaceuticals.
Latvia's half-century of Soviet occupation started with the nationalization of farms into collectives. The large collective farms used intensive farming techniques like high pesticide use and therefore created a legacy of negative impacts on the health of people and the environment. Biodiversity has been lost because of the monocultures used in large-scale, intensive farms. Since biodiversity is critical for wildlife, insects, birds, ecosystems, and the preservation of genetic knowledge, this historical violation of the natural environment around these farms entailed great consequences.
In addition, small farms are under increasing pressure to cut costs to compete with large European farms, a situation that will be exacerbated by entry into the EU. Rural Latvian incomes are about 60 percent of the average income, and employment levels fell 8 percent between 1995 and 2000. Farmers lack the opportunities to overcome these economic hardships.

Mara has created a model Health Farm to demonstrate her holistic approach to battling health problems, environmental degradation, and economic hardship in rural areas. She is promoting healthful food and nutrition as she hosts visitors by sharing her demonstration health garden, serving meals made from organic products, educating visitors about healthy food options, and selling organic products. Environmental protection is addressed by the methods of farming practiced and the health and environmental camps offered during the summer. Traditional health-related practices are experienced at the traditional herbal sauna as well as specific products like herbal pillows. Local farmers are supported through the use and sales of their products at the farm. These income sources provide incentives for farmers to support the system, creating a sustainable project that will continue to thrive and grow in the future. A key strategy for promoting the Health Farm model is creating a network of such farms. Building on the existing structure of the Latvian Association of Organic Farming, Mara works with a national network of over 400 farmers who are dedicated to rural development and healthy living. In order to be designated a Health Farm, standards related to health and nutrition must be met. Farms that meet the strict criteria can promote themselves using the Health Farm trademark that Mara has created. The network of farms becomes its own larger marketplace as organic and biodynamic goods and seeds are bought and sold throughout. Farms that specialize in one product are then able to access a variety of complementary internal goods to serve at their own farms while accessing new markets for their own products. This marketplace provides the basis for expansion out into communities as well, involving bakeries, schools, and other buyers and sellers of organic food.
In addition to creating a network and a brand for Health Farms, Mara is investing in the professionalization of all involved in this work. She is designing a training program for Health Farm Project Council members, a group that includes medical practitioners, natural therapists, policymakers from state institutions for health, education, and tourism, specialists from environmental organizations, and scientists of organic agriculture and regional coordinators. The council's members are participating in the development of the training program itself. Participants are provided with a basic knowledge of anatomy, physiology, wholesome health food principles, ancient herb (phyto) therapy, organic farming techniques, and sustainable lifestyles. Mara has been offering training in the form of Health Farm workshops since October 2002.
The Health Farm system allows an exchange of products and services as well as best practices and information. To remedy the problems farmers have in obtaining the credit needed for their farms, Mara has enlisted a Latvian bank to provide a grant and is working with the bank to develop a loan program for Health Farms. As the health and environmental problems addressed by the Health Farm system are even more severe in other areas of Central and Eastern Europe, Mara's work is spreading beyond Latvia. Groups from Lithuania, Estonia, Poland, and Finland are interested in collaborating to realize the Health Farm vision internationally. This interest has come from international organizations including the AVALON Foundation, Femina Baltica, Powerful Information, Coalition Clean Baltic, and Lithuanian organic farmers.

Mara has always been active in the community. Before becoming a farmer, she worked as a teacher of history and theater and was a leader in Latvia's independence movement at the end of the 1980s. In the early 1990s, she was a regional counselor for the Kuldiga region in Latvia and led a farmer's consultative committee on rural development.
The turning point for Mara's ideas came in 1986 when she and two of her children developed serious health problems. Although conventional medicine failed to help, herbal healing, wholesome food, and herbal steam saunas resulted in significant improvements in their health. Mara's idea to promote healthier lifestyles and combine Western and traditional medicine led her to the Health Farm idea.
In 1991, Mara started developing organic farming methods. She began offering herbal healing, which includes healthy food, nature healing, and herbal steam sauna treatment. In 1996, her farm, Upmali, was presented the State Award of Good Practice Farm (Demonstration Farm). Mara confirmed her entrepreneurial skills by developing new value-added wholesome products at competitive prices. Mara demonstrates her business skills by training other farmers in the ideas of value-added products.