The Social Tree

Regenerative farming offers fertile ground for climate resilience, hope in southern Spain.

Olive oil stirs a deep sense of pride in many a Spaniard. The green gold is a staple of almost every meal here, liberally dashed over slabs of toast at breakfast, drizzled over tuna and onion salads, sizzled on meat and fish, and infused with the eggs and potatoes of a tortilla de patatas.

The mere suggestion that other countries – Italy, for example – are also known for their good quality olive oil can elicit a defensive rebuttal and a pointed reminder that Spain produces nearly half of all the world’s olive oil. The province of Jaén, in Andalusia, with its roughly 66 million olive trees, can in bountiful years account for a fifth of the world’s olive oil production alone.

Olive oil is such a central feature of Spanish food culture that fluctuations in production at farm level are felt acutely by shoppers. During the 2022/23 season, Spain’s olive crop slumped to 666,000 tonnes from the more typical 1.5 million tonnes the year before due to widespread adverse weather such as drought combined with high energy and fertiliser prices.

This sudden plummet sent olive oil prices skyrocketing by a record 111%, making a regular one-litre bottle of olive oil in the supermarket a 10-euro luxury rather than a 5-euro non-negotiable on the shopping list. Harvests and prices have since settled, and it might be tempting to view the events as a flash in an oily pan. But science tells us otherwise.

In Spain, we all know by now (or at least we’ve been warned) that climate change will bring higher temperatures, increased drought, flooding, wildfires, and more extreme adverse weather events. For Spanish olive farmers, concentrated in the south of the country, the impacts of climate change are already acute and interconnected.

Drought conditions like the ones leading up to the poor 2022/23 harvest not only directly inhibit olive tree productivity but also dry out the soil, reduce its nutrients and leave it more vulnerable to erosion. When the rain does arrive to satiate the ground, it often falls in greater quantities over a shorter period, which can lead to flooding and even more erosion as water washes away tilled agricultural land. These phenomena increase the risk of desertification, which already threatens 74% of Spain’s territory, according to the Spanish government.

These environmental changes sow the seeds for social issues such as further depopulation of rural settlements and unemployment. To face this challenge, some farmers are turning to regenerative agriculture and focusing on the health of an often-overlooked component of climate resilience – the soil.

Among the olives

Driving along the country roads of Andalusia can be a bit like driving through a Scooby Doo corridor of olive trees, which whizz by the side of the road interminably. Welcome to the Altiplano Estepario, an area of olives, almonds, and striking badlands stretching across parts of Almería, Granada, and Murcia. Andrés Pío Vallés Opere, an agricultural engineer and olive oil company owner based in the small town of Campo Cámara, turns down a country lane and drives deep into one of his expansive groves.

It’s the autumn harvest and the farm is abuzz with seasonal workers. In small groups, they move from tree to tree, using a harvester to grip each trunk and shake the olives into an upturned umbrella contraption. The more stubborn olives are whacked from the branches with long sticks. Here, olives are not only a source of pride but also employment.

We want to make sure that the people in the region can earn enough money to stay here so that the villages don’t empty even more.

Andrés Pío Vallés Opere, agro-engineer and olive oil company owner.

Pío, as he is known, is a local pioneer of regenerative agriculture, an approach to farming that, as the name suggests, seeks to give back to nature rather than simply extract from it. On his regenerative plots, Pío adopts a no-till farming method, which preserves the topsoil and boosts its overall health, water retention capacity, and erosion resilience. He also abstains from chemical insecticides and fungicides and returns as much organic matter to the soil as possible, for example by letting pruned branches decompose naturally on the ground.

For Pío, it’s not only about giving back to nature, “It’s about trying to ensure that all of the economic returns generated by the farm stay in the area so that we create a circular system, which is also very important in regenerative agriculture – to reinvest in the local territory.”

Speaking to REVOLVE during the harvest, he added: “The olive tree is one of the trees that generates the most work, it requires physical maintenance. This means that our company can employ eight to 10 people year-round. That’s why I say the olive tree is the most social one there is.

We want to make sure that the people in the region can earn enough money to stay here so that the villages don’t empty even more.

A collective effort

At his nearby processing plant, or almazara as it’s known in Spain (language nerds will note the ‘al’ prefix that denotes many an Arabic-origin word in Spanish, a hark back to Al-Andalus), farmers arrive with trailers full of olives from the surrounding countryside. Those who have cultivated their olives, or aceitunas (also of Arabic origin), on ecologically managed farmland tip their produce into a specially designated sorting machine.

From here the olives are zipped through a series of connected belts and machines to be de-twigged, de-stoned, squashed, mulched, and squeezed of their oil. Along the way, byproducts like stones and other organic materials are put aside for new uses such as biofuel and compost.

Some of the ecological olive oil produced here comes from farmers who belong to the HABITAT collective, which aims to foster landscape restoration in the region through organic and regenerative olive cultivation. Another company incentivising sustainable farming in the region is Almendrehesa. Rather than focusing on olive farmers, Almendrehesa’s specialist target is another traditional crop – almonds, or almendras (once again, fellow language nerds!).

A race against time?

At Almendreha’s warehouse in Zújar, great dunes of almonds await processing following the harvest. These almonds have come from farms that have committed to regenerative practices that boost soil, air, and water quality through reduced tillage, agroforestry, and introducing swales.

I’m the youngest farmer here, and I’m 70.

Miguel Gómez Romero, almond farmer

One such farm is toiled by Miguel Gómez Romero, who has witnessed numerous changes over the decades around his village of Ferreira, which sits in the shadow of the snow-capped Sierra Nevada mountains. Some of those changes are positive, others less so.

“Before, we used to till the land a lot more, but now we don’t till it so much and we sow cereals,” he told REVOLVE at his terraced almond plot, not far from Guadix. “But the village, it’s a lost cause. There are no youngsters, there’s no one. I’m the youngest farmer here, and I’m 70.”

Gómez’s pessimistic view is shared by many others in this area of Spain, and indeed across the Mediterranean. It is an outlook defined by a sense of hopelessness. Young people leave these rural villages in droves to find opportunities in the city. With them, they take their labour and their ideas. Equally, a lack of financial opportunity and innovation makes it hard to attract incomers.

“I don’t know what will happen in the next 10 years,” Gómez said, adding that he hoped some change could be brought about. “But things don’t look great.”

A network for change

It starts with a vision. Almendrehesa and Habitat are two small but meaningful cogs in a much wider network of like-minded people collaborating as part of the AlVelAl association. This association brought together hundreds of farmers, businesses, researchers, activists, and civilians across a million hectares in the Altiplano Estepario and asked them a question: What kind of future would you like to see?

We have poor soil with low levels of organic material, and because of this our farmers tend to adopt unsustainable management systems when it comes to their land.

Laura Núñez, ALAND

AlVelAl is recovering ecosystems, encouraging regenerative farming, and reviving economic and social opportunities across the territory with a holistic 20-year landscape restoration plan. The small actions of each of its participants strengthen the overall endeavour to return a sense of inspiration to local communities.

These efforts are bolstered by the EU-funded project GOV4ALL, which focuses on long-term sustainable soil health solutions, business, and governance models through the creation of living labs. With GOV4ALL, the Altiplano Estepario region can build connections internally and externally through its links with similar initiatives in Menorca, France, and Greece. The project also acts as a conduit between local actors and decision-making bodies at regional, national, and EU level.

Laura Nuñez, a project manager with ALAND, which is helping to develop AlVelAl’s landscape restoration program, told REVOLVE more about the region’s environmental challenges and what they hope to achieve from the GOV4ALL project. 

“Our main challenges are influenced by the climatological factors in our territory, as we have such low precipitation, we have poor soil with low levels of organic material, and because of this our farmers tend to adopt unsustainable management systems when it comes to their land,” she said.

Nuñez explained that these practices often include heavy tilling of the land, low return of organic material into the soil, and reliance on chemical inputs. These techniques may provide short-term benefits to the farmer in terms of yield, but in the long term, they exacerbate landscape degradation.

“In AlVelAl, for the last 10 years we have been working to try to revert these practices, and to provide information to local farmers on how to improve their farms when it comes to soil, biodiversity, and water retention,” she added.

All about soil

As part of their participation in GOV4ALL, local partners in the Altiplano Estepario are working to establish a regional regeneration hub in the form of a soil museum. The museum will allow visitors to learn about regenerative farming practices and how they can improve the health of the soil in the region. This centre will funnel the research and findings of the GOV4ALL project to ensure a legacy of agro-innovation for generations to come.

Improving soil health is a starting point that can trigger a domino effect throughout society. By regenerating their land, local farmers boost their resilience to climate change, encourage biodiversity to flourish, spark new market chains linked to sustainable produce, and provide families with more reasons to stay in the area.

Landscape restoration does not happen overnight. But by putting their vision into action, the residents of the Altiplano Estepario are taking a crucial step towards safeguarding their territory and food security in the face of a changing climate. Their mission can inspire others across the continent.