During her studies on Landscape Planning and Design at the University of Natural Resources and Applied Life Sciences in Vienna, Irmi Salzer engaged herself among other things at the ÖH Boku (as student rights representative and chair) and at the self-governing vegetarian eatery TÜWI. She also took many lengthy study trips to such places as Costa Rica, Moscow and Portugal, and found the time to work at a collectively managed organic vegetable producer in Sooß in Baden. In order to research her thesis on the landless workers` movement MST, she spent a year in Brazil. Since 2002, Salzer has worked together with her partner and three children on running an organic farm in Austria`s South Burgenland. Since 2006, she has served as a consultant on press and public relations to ÖVB-Via Campensina Austria and as a board member of the Agrarbündnis Österreich (Agricultural Alliance of Austria) as well as a member of the workgroup "GAP and Nutritional Sovereignty" of  the European association Via Campensina (ECVC).