On October 9, Agricultural Policy Research Center organized an excursion to Phoka Nunnery of St. Nino, in the Javakheti region of Georgia. The Javakheti highland is a mountainous terrain at an altitude of 2000 m above sea level and home to the ominous Abul Mountain (3301 m) which can be seen from every side. Students from both ISET and researchers ISET-PI joined the excursion.

The nunnery makes many contributions to the education of the completely non-Georgian local population. Extra lessons are conducted for the school pupils on Georgian language and literature, geography and English.

Since the foundation of the nunnery, great attention has been paid to agricultural activities and animal husbandry. Throughout the first years, the large share of work was directed towards learning traditional agricultural activities such as grain-growing, crop growing, management of gourd fields and greenhouses, cow farming. Several years of practice revealed the priorities in the activities that appeared to be most effective and accessible under the existing circumstances.

They have an excellent shop where visitors can buy different products. The main product is cheese - many years of experience and working and efforts of merging the local traditions and climate with French experience and European technologies of cheese-making yielded unique types of cheese that are then sold in the nunnery’s shop. Also, they are producing chocolate, candles, sweets, honey, and more other things.

The purpose of the excursion was to learn more about Poka’s successful activities and understand how this success could be replicated in other contexts in Georgia.