We were on a trip to Falköping, Sweden, on November 10-12, 2016, as part of the Kasvua Ruokaprovinsista project and Liiver. There were a total of 32 people in our traveling group. We held the flag of Liiver's youth division high with Ilari Hauhia, Loviisa Mäki and Heidi Kohtala.
The study tour from Liiver was attended by Loviisa Mäki, Juha Koivisto, Tuula Sundberg, Reetta Yli-Hynnilä, Sinikka Koivumäki, Ilari Hauhia, Heidi Kohtala, Hannemari Niemi, Keijo Viertoma and Rami Mattila. The host was Niclas Fällstöm from the Östra Skaraborg Leader group.
We arrived at Gothenburg Airport and took a bus to Falköping. First we saw the city, then small villages and finally just fields and individual houses. We wondered if there might be some of the places we had heard about in advance. Yes, there were. Our first stop was a café in an old mill, then we continued to a small dairy shop, a large cheese café and a crispbread factory. From there, we continued to the market hall and dinner at a cellar restaurant.
The next day we visited a bison farm and went on a bison safari. The destination became a personal favorite of the youth group. The farm also had moose, deer, and a nice one-room moose hotel and banquet facilities. We also visited Sweden's smallest market hall, a slaughterhouse, and an art exhibition, which also had banquet facilities and a café. The last day's destination was a prehistoric open-air museum.
Overall, we thought the trip was successful and diverse. Some of the destinations visited were quite far apart on small roads, but the businesses still had enough customers. From our perspective, the difference to Finland seemed to be in the attitudes and future prospects of young people. In Falköping, young people had stayed to develop their home region and stepped into their parents' shoes, filling them in their own way and creating opportunities for themselves in the sparsely populated countryside. The profitability of their own businesses was not questioned. Local food producers and providers worked closely together and in every place you could find each other's products for sale. This kind of entrepreneurship and helping others would also be needed in Finland.
-Heidi, Loviisa & Ilari