Hi there,
my friends,
and welcome back to the Deep Seat Podcast.
This week I am in the Spanish region of Murcia,
one of the driest places in the whole of Europe.
And something quite amazing is happening here.
A group of people are working really hard to bring a river back to life.
I came all the way here to meet with Silvia Cuarta.
She's one of the leaders of this very cool and very ambitious project.
If they can pull this off,
and after my conversation with Sylvia,
I am absolutely convinced that they can,
it would be huge because they would be essentially presenting the blueprint to follow for thousands,
maybe even millions of places around the world that face the same kind of challenges.
This episode was made in partnership with Soil Capital.
I am your host,
Raphael,
and this is the Deep Seat Podcast.
I'm
Silvia Quarta,
I'm from Italy,
but I've been working on drylands restoration in Spain for the past six,
seven years.
And for five years I've been working on this farm with a project focused on practical restoration and practical learning.
And now I'm involved in more participatory processes in the area.
Sweet,
there's a lot to talk about there.
Maybe you could rewind a little bit,
you could tell us what led you to become so passionate about ecosystem restoration?
I think it's always accidents and people you bump into.
I studied environmental sciences in my master and through my internship I then went to visit a,
well I worked on a project in Ecuador on
water harvesting and participatory processes with the community there.
And that was quite crazy.
But apart from that,
I stayed for a couple of weeks on a farm of a guy who's a professor at the university,
but he's also managing this piece of land with his wife.
They're both university professors,
and they turned a very damaged ecosystem into a super thriving farm.
They were producing food boxes,
and they were doing a lot of farming.
to farmer to farmer schools and trainings.
So to me it was very inspiring.
His name is Stephen Sherwood.
And
I think there I thought,
well,
I really like this life and what he does.
And I like that he has this scientific background and a strong basis for what he does,
but it's also very much with the hands on the ground and working with people from the area to improve everyone's livelihood and not to bring in something that...
he thinks works from the outside and i think that's how it happens and then i worked for more than a year on a project volunteering drylands restoration and then i ended up here the central topic of our discussion today is going to be ecosystem restoration and in particular there's
a project that you're working on right here right in this in this region maybe you could tell us more about this project specifically yeah so actually right now we're in a piece of land that
But it's been a...
experimental plot for the past six,
seven years on this farm.
And that's what I've been managing until a year ago.
So here we've tried to set up a system,
which is an agricultural system,
but it's very diverse.
And now it's finally showing it.
But we realized that working on,
this is only five hectares.
The farm,
it's a thousand hectares.
And we realized that working,
whether it's five,
whether it's a thousand,
doesn't matter,
working only on farm level,
it's not enough.
So with everyone else,
From living and working on the farm,
we started talking about this
Kipar watershed idea.
So the farm is set at the spring of a river,
which is the Kipar River,
and the spring is drying out,
it's been contaminated with nitrates,
it's suffering like most rivers and most springs in the Mediterranean.
So we thought,
what if we work at the valley level,
so with all the...
landowners,
all the farmers,
all the people living in an area which is a watershed,
it's a valley,
so we are connected to the water and it's much more,
makes much more sense than working on,
I don't know,
municipality or regional level.
And then what if we try and bring the change at that scale?
So that's what we're trying to do now and we're working at the watershed scale.
Okay so you have this Kipar river that starts here at the farm and that normally flows through the watershed here.
And that river has been drying out.
And so you have this big project now,
I read that it's 30 years long.
project to try and revive this water.
Well,
it's a forever project of course,
but it's a long-term project,
it's not a quick fix.
There's a long-term vision here to work within the watershed with different people,
different farmers,
different stakeholders,
to try to revive this river.
Is that right?
Yes.
Maybe we could start with the assessment of the current situation with this watershed.
What's the deal?
Yes,
so in the past year we've done a lot of participatory workshops with people from the area,
farmers,
livestock,
farmers,
teachers,
school kids.
So we've tried to put everyone together.
First of all,
to assess the situation,
and really there's a huge agreement on what the problematic is.
So on one hand it's great,
everyone agrees,
we all know what's the problem.
On the other hand it means it's very big and very visible.
And the main things are...
over-exploitation of the aquifers and of water in general,
contamination of the water,
so it's not only too much of it which is used because of the intensive agriculture increasing,
but it's also contaminated because of fertilizers used in agriculture.
There's a huge flow of population that goes from the countryside to the city,
so this area is highly depopulated.
It's getting old.
probably within 10 years most farmers here would be retired which means more bigger companies coming in and buying land possibly.
So these are like the core elements and then there's of course the element of the climate change which makes farming in such a harsh landscape.
We are at 1000 meters elevation here so we usually have snow in the winter,
we have
40 degrees in the summer so it's extreme weather and now it's just becoming worse.
and
completely shifting rainfall patterns,
so it makes it really hard for a dryland farmer to make a living.
So that's another huge challenge and the farmers that are still here and want to be here cannot,
like it's really hard to make it.
So these are the core issues that we're facing here.
So clearly the situation here is very complicated.
We have a highly degraded landscape,
depleted aquifers,
young people leaving and farmers about to retire.
So how do you solve this?
What's the plan?
So we're trying things.
We don't know how to go about it because we've never done it before.
But basically we started steering everything we were already doing into this watershed instead of this farm.
So as I was saying,
all of these participatory processes,
so we're looking for projects that allow us to involve people and we just,
thanks to a European project which is called Humus,
we did all these workshops which ended up with the signature of a manifesto,
so like an agreement,
a deal for the valley where we wrote down what's the current situation.
what do we want,
which actions do we need to take.
So we also try to make it very practical.
So the first thing is that,
like we're aware that we need to involve everyone and as many people as we can.
So overall we had between these workshops and also interviews that we did in collaboration with the CSIC which is a research institute from Murcia.
They're also working on this watershed.
because they look for funding and they're part of this other European project,
which is called Landex.
And they're focused on flood and drought prevention,
also through participatory processes.
So we kind of united.
We said,
OK,
we're focusing on the same area.
We're focusing on the same,
very similar issues.
So we combined all these workshops and interviews and we got around 100 people to be interviewed or participating in the workshops.
So I've been living here for five years,
Afons has been living here for
12, other,
Yannick,
seven,
eight,
Jacobo,
seven.
So we have contacts here.
So that was the first step.
Okay,
we call the people we know,
invite them.
So it's a guy that has a farm near us,
or he's the guy that is managing the almond trees or whatever.
So you start there.
And then you start with...
going to the bar and putting signs there or talking to anyone at the bar,
which I've done anyways,
always.
So it's just talking about this and inviting them and asking them if they want to do the interview.
And it's about collecting your voice and listening to you and not,
we're not offering these workshops to come and tell you what you should do.
And then at first people are really not,
not trusting us.
It's like,
what is it?
What's underneath?
No.
And then usually what happens is that when they realize you're actually listening,
they're really happy and they're really surprised that someone is actually calling them and listening to them.
So a very important first step is really invite people and then listen before you start talking.
Yeah,
because anyways,
whatever solution we want to implement,
even if we have the master plan,
it's never going to happen if these people are not engaged in it.
So we're not even really...
I mean,
we have our dream,
no?
We know we have a vision of,
we want this valley to be green,
to be full of more projects,
to have many things.
But in the end,
it's a bit more about getting out the vision that everybody has and implementing that.
Otherwise,
it's never going to be anything.
And the vision,
of course,
is that we ended up creating one shared one,
which is,
well,
that the rural doesn't die.
That we can live in the countryside with the same services that people have in the city.
that our daughters or grandkids can live here and have a proper living,
that we can do agriculture and sustain ourselves without destroying our resources.
So things that are really basic in a way,
but
I think it's quite powerful to put them together and have people say,
yeah,
we actually agree on this.
And then action-wise,
again,
a lot of things came up.
But yeah,
the other day that we had like the closing workshop,
It was a lot about kind of setting up groups,
for example,
a group to promote local consumption of local product and sustainable products.
So how do we do that?
A cooperative or whatever,
finding solutions in that sense.
And then conversations about doing reforestation along the river.
So how to get maybe a list of farmers that are interested in doing reforestation on their land or creating groups for volunteers that would want to join all of these actions.
So very practical things that now we're going to start engaging with.
I really love that this wasn't about coming up with a master plan and then imposing this plan on everyone in the region and saying,
look,
this is what we came up with.
And this is a great plan.
So let's all follow it.
They did exactly the opposite.
So a lot of talking and listening with research institutes,
with schools,
with farmers,
with...
everyone invested in this community,
in this landscape,
and try to find those common grounds on which to build a real action plan.
I want to turn the conversation specifically towards agriculture and regenerative agriculture,
because that's the central topic of the Deep Seed podcast.
I assume that a huge part of the land from that region,
that watershed landscape,
is managed by farmers,
right?
So they are the stewards of the land,
so they are key to the restoration of this ecosystem,
right?
Maybe first you could tell us a little bit about how you see regenerative agriculture as part of the solution,
how it helps with the problems that you're facing here.
Well,
yeah,
this is also everything we were experimenting exactly here.
It's like,
how do you build a system which is not destroying the resources,
which is sustaining the soil,
the biodiversity,
but it's also productive.
The system as it is now,
it doesn't work.
There's a drought,
there's been three years of drought,
no harvest of cereals,
no harvest of almonds because then you have the frost.
And it's true all of these things you cannot control with how you farm,
you cannot control the flood,
you cannot,
well,
you cannot control the climate,
but you can.
diversify enough and and prepare yourself and be resilient enough so that it doesn't kill you but yeah you're you're maintaining and so i think it's multiple layers of regenerative agriculture on one hand is indeed the diversification the the rainwater harvesting all of this known to be more resilient using
local varieties different varieties from the most conventional ones but then And on the other hand,
I think there's also a big chunk of it,
which is...
how to increase the value of what you produce and whether it's through promoting local consumption and make people a bit more aware of how nice it is to eat meat and cereals and almonds from your area rather than get the ones coming from california and not having an alternative yeah
okay you expect buyers especially from the local community to understand the idea the project the room.
regeneration and to be willing to make an effort to buy these products rather than other products at the supermarket.
Yeah,
I think if we all agreed on this,
like we all agreed on we have a vision,
which is being able to sustain ourselves here and being able to keep doing agriculture here,
then we're aware that the way we're doing it doesn't work.
So doing it regenerative means we're maintaining the resources,
we're improving the resources.
So then maybe we are willing to
Yeah.
Work for it also as consumers.
Yeah,
okay,
I see,
yeah.
Although I know that most of the times the consumers willing to pay for this are outside,
which is also fine.
Yeah,
yeah.
But I think local awareness,
it's super important.
There's got to be a power to that,
right?
Because if I go to a shop and I see something that is branded sustainable or regenerative from across the world,
and I have no visual connection to that ecosystem,
I've never been there,
I don't know the people,
part of me will be like,
Yes,
it's really nice to pay extra for this product because I know I'm doing good somewhere in the world,
but I don't have the same emotional connection and motivation to pay more that I would have if it was the ecosystem I live in.
It's my region,
it's my bio region,
let's say.
And
I see it,
I drive through it every day and I get explained actually all of this goes towards using less chemicals,
reviving the ecosystem,
the biodiversity.
you know,
this river that used to flow here down in the village that's dry now,
we're trying to revive it.
I would,
I would be a lot more motivated to go deeper into my pockets.
Obviously,
not everyone can,
granted,
but to go deeper into my pockets,
even if it hurts a bit,
because
I know what I'm supporting.
Right.
Yeah,
of course,
it's a balance.
But indeed,
when you know it's your neighbor,
it's someone you bring the kids to school with,
I don't know,
when you know it's in your community,
I feel like there,
maybe there's a bit more desire.
There's also a sense of when everyone else around you is supporting a project and helping,
you feel more willing to participate as well.
If you feel like you're the only one,
you're kind of like,
if no one else is making an effort,
why should I,
right?
So that the feeling of being part of BioRegion,
seeing that projects are emerging,
that people are getting together to make this happen,
it must somehow trigger something.
Yeah,
and that's really the feeling I got from these workshops that people got there.
Or through the interviews,
you would see people very hopeful.
hopeless in a way,
or at the beginning of the workshops.
And then at the end,
of course,
they're very much aware that it's like,
okay,
now we're just talking.
So nothing is changing.
But yet,
a sense of a bit uplifted,
a bit inspired,
a bit feeling like,
okay,
I'm not alone seeing this shit around me.
And I'm not alone having to fight against it.
There's other people that agree with me.
And maybe we can change something.
That's a great feeling.
It's amazing.
Coming back to regenerative agriculture,
I'm trying to understand how regenerative agriculture practices can help revive a whole river.
What's the sort of the process,
the science behind that?
So the idea is that the river is dry because the water cycle is broken,
which means...
There is a rainfall,
most water doesn't infiltrate,
it flows away,
so you have very fast water cycles.
You have the rainfall,
you have floods,
and the water goes away.
Plus,
there's the extraction of water from the aquifer,
which means the level of the groundwater is going down,
which means there's less water coming to the surface through springs.
And one of the ideas of regenerative agriculture is to restore the soils and...
No restored soil.
What they do is that they act like sponges,
which means they infiltrate more water.
So by restoring the soil,
you also restore the water cycle,
which means it rains,
the water infiltrates,
it infiltrates slowly,
it goes slowly into the next layer,
into the groundwater.
And then you have months later springs coming out.
So you have this,
you don't rely on the rainfall anymore.
No,
you're building a system which is spongy,
which is resilient,
and it's slower and more long-term.
Well,
now we're really relying only on the rain.
All the water we get,
a lot of it just goes away and floods all the coast cities.
So that river,
it does flow from time to time,
but just in flashes.
The river flows in areas.
So at the beginning of the river,
you see the water has spring,
it comes out.
It has decreased exponentially in the past 20 years,
but there's water.
Then after maybe one or two kilometers it disappears,
and actually the land you can really see on Google Maps,
the land is almond fields all of a sudden.
There's no more river line,
it's just plowed.
So they cancelled the river.
And then a few kilometers down,
it comes up again,
because it's new springs.
So it's multiple springs,
it's not only one,
right?
So it's just,
it doesn't have a constant flow anymore.
And of course,
it's much less water than it used to have.
So what regenerative agriculture does by covering the soil,
by doing water retention,
by creating ponds and swales and tilling against the slope,
tilling much less.
So all of this is indeed restoring the soil,
restoring the water,
restoring the water cycle and reforestation actions and biodiversity of the whole system.
There's also this research known that says that rainfall depends also on this bacteria.
that are killed by pesticides.
So you know how the droplet they have to hold onto something to make water.
Okay,
I didn't hear about that.
It's dust or bacteria or very you know micro particles and then apparently these bacteria are changing the temperature at which water condenses.
So then they help to have rainfall at lower altitudes.
So kind of having this like small,
more local cycle rather than the big cycle.
Yeah,
right.
Yeah,
yeah.
There's the small water cycle.
But I never heard that this kind of bacteria was contributing to make it rain.
And so if you use pesticides,
it kills.
There are lots of things,
but this is probably one of them.
Just a quick post to tell you about the official partner of the Deep Seat podcast,
and that's
Sol Capital.
Soil Capital is a company that accelerates the transition to regenerative agriculture by financially rewarding farmers who improve the health of their soils.
They are an incredible company.
I love what they're doing and I'm super proud to be partnering with them for the Deep Seed podcast.
And at the moment,
are there many farmers within this group and within this landscape who are practicing regenerative agriculture?
There are some that don't know they're doing it,
but they're doing it.
Not much,
though.
Still,
I must say,
it's an area which is quite traditional in a way which is also not super invasive.
I mean,
some people have sheep,
which are extensively grazing,
mixed with the cereal,
so it's not a terrible type of agriculture.
As I said,
there's more and more intensive agriculture in the irrigated areas.
some people are for example maintaining this kind of
bit like wetlands area at the bottom of the valley so where they're not really going in with the plows and they have more grains and the animals but only in specific periods in time so they really know the land and they're really aware of what they're doing and and taking care of it as much as they can but what we're trying
to to do it's also to do implementation on different farms so we just got the funding through common land to actually do action on five different farms
water retention actions and we offer trainings through the regeneration academy which is a foundation based here on the farm that does training originative agriculture which are most sometimes open to to anyone so
there's not much happening yet some people maybe are doing it some things so we're just trying to push it a bit more and offer
whatever tools we have and offer the farm as a learning space and all of that.
Okay,
so you mentioned CommonLand,
they're invested in the project.
And you said that they're investing in farms within this region to transition to regenerative?
Is that what?
Well,
they're supporting with money to do this implementation of water retention infrastructure.
So whether it's like swales and ponds or strips of vegetation,
so it's very concrete actions on a few farms.
I know that's something that
Alfonso and Yannick have been doing here on the farm for a long time already.
So this is to implement,
I guess,
in new farms who are kind of not doing that yet.
Yeah.
So we are indeed,
we're trying to contact farms of people that have a feeling for this and they like it and they want to do more of it on their land.
But maybe don't have necessarily,
well,
the money,
first of all,
or the knowledge on exactly what and how.
so
we're trying to make it also a bit of an exchange like look we have money to do implementation we have a machinery that can come for a few days on your land what would you do where would you do it and then kind of see if there's yeah if it matches what people would do and what what we would suggest so
that it's again like a co-creation of items yeah it makes a lot of sense you're going for the let's say the lowest hanging fruits which are the people who are already quite interested in this that you probably have met because it's the regions farmers it's It's very...
Social,
they communicate,
right?
So I'm sure that you already had from the beginning an idea of a few people who might be interested.
And you come in with budget to actually implement something good for their land.
So it's a win-win.
Yeah.
And in exchange,
we ask them basically to...
give us proof of what's been done but also to like join trainings and we also would like to we hope that this can also create a bit of like a smaller community of pioneer farmers here that have implemented these first things and then they can also come and exchange and see what the other has done and maybe they like contaminate each other with i've done this but the other guys doing that or maybe that's also nice on my farm and then kind
of learning from each other maybe also things that we haven't done here you also mentioned the regeneration academy
Could you tell us more about what it is and how it plays a role in this whole project?
Yeah,
so it's a foundation that
Janik Schoonhoven,
she's also the wife of Alfonso,
and she funded the academy maybe six,
seven,
eight years ago,
I don't know anymore.
And the goal was always basically to focus more on research and education,
but very much connected with
learning that are useful for farmers,
for the land,
and a practical experience for the students.
So they offer different things.
They do programs for students that come here and do their internship and their thesis,
like Marijke that just left and we're doing this monitoring of flora here.
But also they're very much this connecting point between research and farmers.
I think that's one of the biggest...
most impactful work that they do also.
So getting all this information that comes from research,
from academia,
related with regenerative agriculture,
and then making it available for farmers through workshops,
through all these visits that we offer to the farm.
So it's a combination of different things.
And also they work with school kids from the area,
talking about soil health or biodiversity or the water cycle.
So kind of touching on to many different layers of education.
and yeah i would say translating it all into a language which is understandable for different people yeah and making it accessible for people that maybe would not be able to yeah go and find it super important the education part i never thought about it before but i love this sort of circular nature of the project here where on the one hand you have scientists coming here you have research institutes coming to study the
the impact of these practices of regenerative agriculture of many things that are happening here.
to feed the knowledge pool of science,
the scientific knowledge pool,
to help farmers around the world figure things out.
And data comes in from all of these farms as well,
but then it comes back here to the farm via this academy.
Yeah,
and also just checking,
does it make sense what we're doing?
Are we improving soil health by diversifying?
All these things we talk about,
yes,
we can just look at it and think we know,
but sometimes we need to monitor.
and then having
people that know how to do it usually helps.
We've assessed the situation today,
we've discussed your plan to improve the situation.
What's the vision in
30 years time?
If everything goes to plan,
how will this place have evolved?
Everything looks like this and we eat very nice local food and we have
A lot of,
well,
a lot.
We have enough water flowing through the river to sustain all the biodiversity and life and not only farm.
That we have more people choosing to live and stay in the countryside,
more projects similar to ours,
more farms,
more.
We have maybe a brand of products from the Kipar Valley where you know that everything you buy from here,
it's regenerative,
it's sustainable,
it's taking care of the water.
We have a lot of areas that are being reforested.
We have more schools because now all the schools are closing.
We have just a super happy diverse watershed which is functional.
That sounds like such a beautiful dream,
right?
Could you give us an example of a moment where you felt very happy and proud and you felt like what you were doing made a difference?
Well,
the most recent one that comes to me,
it's this last workshop that we had with all kinds of people from the area.
There were shepherds,
there were farmers,
there were people from environmental associations,
which usually are like fighting against each other.
There were people from the municipality and we had people running the bar.
And we managed to have all these people together and to...
come to agreements on actions that we're going to do together.
And when the worship finished,
people stayed and chatted and hung around.
So that I really felt,
wow.
This is something.
I don't know if it's going anywhere,
but I feel like this for me it's already super tiny,
powerful step.
So to get people excited about this and feel like,
yes,
maybe we can do a little bit of change.
I think that's huge.
It's not tiny.
I think that's huge.
Getting people together like that and getting them to talk,
to exchange,
to meet,
to start understanding each other,
listening to each other,
respecting each other.
It can make all the difference in the world,
I think.
So it's huge.
Let's hope.
congratulations for that if there's one key message you would like people to hear and remember today what would it be that you need to bring people together to to actually bring change forward and to do things and i think yeah
now it's a very nice moment to bring people together and it's a crisis a bit no well a bit it is so it can be a crisis and and getting stuck into okay i don't know what to do or it can be a crisis and
This visioning exercise that we do that sometimes people don't understand,
I think it's actually a very powerful and nice exercise to do together with more people.
What do you envision?
What is your ideal situation and how do you get there?
So I think dream and bring people together.