Since the primary sector is made up of barely 4% of the workforce in Spain, it is not surprising that discussions about the way we produce food tend towards simplification. It is a complex issue, from which society has been ignoring itself as the food supply was guaranteed.
Extensive or intensive farming? Organic or conventional food? Meat yes or no? These are, to a large extent, false dilemmas: the truth is that there are many variables in agricultural and livestock management that prevent the formulation of this type of dichotomy. And the biggest impact the food system has on the planet is literally hidden underground.
This is what the defenders of the regenerative agriculturean international movement that is still marginal in our country – where it was introduced a decade ago by the Australian Darren Doherty–, but it is gaining more and more followers. His maxim: if we seek a sustainable food system, it is necessary to take care of the soil. And its regeneration necessarily passes through self-sufficient farmswhere livestock feeds agriculture and vice versa.
“In recent decades, the last century, conventional agriculture and livestock have been separated and those beneficial links that livestock had with the plant and the soil have been broken, and that generates all kinds of problems and deficiencies,” he explains to Direct to the Palate Ana Dignpresident of the Association of Regenerative Agriculture in Iberia.
“The grasslands and the forests no longer have that beneficial impact that is the cattle”
Since the cattle were stabled, Digón explains, the animals live worse and develop more pathologies –and their meat, he insists, is of poorer quality–; but, in addition, by leaving the natural environment, the ground suffers.
“The meadows and forests no longer have that beneficial impact that is cattle,” explains Digón. “On one side the forests are abandoned and everything is filled with low scrub that is a fire hazard and the prairies are losing botanical and microbiological biodiversity of the soil. These grasslands that are rotated in conventional, extractive agriculture no longer have the input animal. If you extract year after year you are going to have to add something to it, you are not giving it what the soil needs with manure, so you have to supply it with chemistry. These fertilizers that what they do is greatly simplify the nutritional system of the plant”.
The result, explains the president of the association: more fragile crops that need more phytosanitary products –ergo, a greater investment in inputs– and increasingly poorer soils. A vicious circle that, together with low prices, leads farmers and ranchers to situations of massive debt.
Less expenses, more peace of mind
Juan Luis Dominguez Campa, who has a small ranch in Retamal de Llerena (Badajoz), assures that he came to regenerative agriculture “out of necessity”, looking for a way to make his exploitation profitable.
In the 1990s his brother started modernize traditional farming, of sheep and rainfed crops, which he had inherited from his father. He did it in the wake of the new aid from the Community Agrarian Policy (PAC) that gave more money the more land you planted.
“My brother arrived with great enthusiasm, he increased the machinery, the movement, the tillage, and there came a time when between fallow and cultivation the entire farm was planted and pasture for cattle was increasingly scarce. That leads you to supplement, to buy feed. At first things work well because you get good harvests. What nobody tells you is that fertilizers have their effect. It’s like mining. You go on harvesting and there comes a time when that excess tillage impoverishes the land and no matter how much fertilizer you add, you don’t get the yield from the beginning. At 20 years old we were not getting the same yields and we started looking for what was happening”.
It was the year 2012. In the midst of a crisis. “If we continued in the dynamic of previous years we had to ask for credits, which is what all farmers do,” explains Domínguez. “Put yourself in the bank and continue down that path that was in decline.”
“The net comes out similar to us, but the ground is getting better and better and we work less and we are happier”
The Domínguezes considered moving to the ecological agriculturebut they were not convinced. “It was to change conventional fertilizer for organic fertilizer, but management is not changed,” they insist. Looking for information, they came to the courses given by the regenerative agriculture association and began, little by little, to change the farm.
Currently they are mainly dedicated to raising Iberian pigs –which still have a part of conventional management– and sheep. The transition has not been easy. The soil takes time to recover and production is lower, but the meat, being of better quality, is sold at a better price – on its own website, Mundos Nuevos – and much less is spent. “The net comes out similar to us but with the advantage that the soil is getting better and better, we work less and we are happier”, concludes Domínguez.
There is no land recovery without livestock
Regenerative agriculture promotes a change in the management of crops, herds, and exploitation of water resources, with various techniquesnot always traditional (nor esoteric) such as “holistic management”, “key line”, “carbon farming” or “grazing planning”.
But the movement also insists on changing the way we consume, which is why in the Anglo-Saxon world there is already talk of “regenerative nutrition”.
Its promoters believe in the need to promote local consumption, but they deny other widespread trends in food, such as organic farming or veganism.
“There are many ways to find a healthy and close product,” says Digón
In the United States there is a regenerative agriculture certification, issued by the Rodale Institute, for which it is also necessary to have the organic farming stamp. In Spain there is no certificate of this type and the members of the association are not asked to produce organically.
“There are those who have them and others who don’t and It is a business decision of each farm, because in many cases it is a market decision”, explains the president of the association. “We promote management and awareness of where things come from, reduce the use of external inputs and study these uses. There are many ways to find a healthy and close product”.
What all the supporters of regenerative agriculture insist on is the importance of livestock. In his opinion, eating meat is not necessarily more polluting.
“Herbivores are essential in ecosystems, no matter how we get on, whether we want to eat them or not,” explains Digón. “If you remove the cattle, a lot of herds of deer will not appear that do that function. Domesticated herbivores are necessary to regenerate what we have destroyed. They are a healing tool. They are in fact the most powerful healing tool, which works 24 hours without pay.
For Digón, the new vegetable meats are pure fifth columnism: “It is very intelligent for the industry to propose veganism as an alternative, but do people think about where all those vegetable proteins come from? They don’t come from thin airThey come from highly industrialized processing, from crops that kill the life of the soil and the ecosystem.”
From the macro farm to the micro farm
Sergio Alierta He is a veterinarian and owner of a cattle farm located in the towns of Farlete and Monegrillos, in the middle of the Monegros desert (Zaragoza). After spending 10 years in Argentina, he returned to his native Aragon and transformed the family sheep farm into a cattle farm: 80 heads A cross between Asturiana de la Montaña and Aberdeen Angus, with regenerative management and ecological certification, with which it produces meat that is sold almost exclusively online (at high prices).
“There is a market that really appreciates it, and less and less meat will be consumedbut being more aware of what is consumed”, says Alierta.
On your farm, there are practically no inputs: the cows feed exclusively on grass and dry hay that is produced on the farm itself. Before bringing food from outside, assures the rancher, he would reduce the size of the herd.
“The farm model that is spreading makes no sense, especially if we start talking about the carbon footprint from an intensive feedlot”, explains Alierta. “It’s pure inertia. In the end, the system leads you to get into this cycle of making it more and more intensive, more industrial. I’m talking to you especially about ruminants, pigs and monogastrics, well, but ruminants they don’t make any sense take them to industrialization, its great virtue is to take advantage of what it cannot take advantage of”.
One of the criticisms that is always made of non-conventional agricultural management is that they are less profitable and, in the long run, they would not be able to feed the growing population. Only those who could afford it could eat meat.
For Digón, the reality is just the opposite: “An FAO study that was carried out over four years, with 400 scientists, established that not only can it not feed the world, it is that it is the only thing that can do it. That kind of family agriculturewhich integrates animals, agriculture, intelligent design, short processes, direct sales… That is what can feed the world”.
Time will tell if he is right. At the moment, while in Spain small farmers complain about the obstacles that the administration puts up for, for example, combine agricultural and livestock work, regenerative agriculture has found the support of some multinationals of the food industrysuch as PepsiCo, General Mills, Nestlé or Unilever, which are financing programs in this regard as a way to meet their emission reduction goals.
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