Slobodan Duvnjak: One can live well from selling Livanjski cheese

Farmer Slobodan Duvnjak (24) is one of many who sell Livanjski cheese by the road in Šuica near Tomislavgrad. He says one can make a decent living from it. He boasts that the famous actor Aljoša Vučković used to buy cheese from him.

- This season was a bust for us. There was no snow, so you could count the tourists on one hand. But I'm not complaining. We don't stockpile large quantities of cheese, and what we have finds its customers – Slobodan told the BiH news agency Patria (NAP).

Slobodan wakes up around seven o'clock, and by eight he is at his “workplace”. He is just one of many who descend to the main road every day from the surrounding villages of Livno, Kupres, and Šuica to offer their agricultural products, primarily Livanjski cheese and honey, to passers-by.

Since the conflicts in these areas destroyed agricultural and livestock cooperatives in the 90s, people had to organize themselves.

The highway passing through Šuica represents the only source of income for most of them. The main connection between the western part of Bosnia and Herzegovina and the central and southern parts, as well as Dalmatia in Croatia, feeds hundreds of people in this region every day.

Slobodan's family of six has been producing Livanjski cheese and bee products for five generations. Until the 90s, they worked for several reputable Dalmatian restaurants, but after the aggression against BiH, they could no longer establish those connections, so the road became their only “marketplace”.

- Livanjski cheese is highly valued around the world. They say it resembles the French Gruyère cheese, which, like Livanjski, is produced on family farms – Slobodan tells NAP, and further explains.

- It takes at least two to two and a half months for the cheese to develop blue mold, which is the only reliable sign that the cheese has matured and is ready for the market. Until it matures, it is necessary to collect milk from sheep or cows, take it to the cheesery, then drain it into molds, and then, until it matures, daily control and turn the cheese in the molds. When the cheese is ready in the recognizable thick wheels weighing about 2400 grams, it is sold at a price of 15 KM per kilogram – says Slobodan. He explains that his family invests a lot in quality.

- We cannot have bad products. If our sales dropped, it would practically mean many problems for the whole family because, besides producing and selling Livanjski cheese, we don't know what else we could do here – says Slobodan.