Investing in Regenerative Agriculture and Food
Investing in Regenerative Agriculture and Food podcast features the pioneers in the regenerative food and agriculture space to learn more on how to put our money to work to regenerate soil, people, local communities and ecosystems while making an appropriate and fair return. Hosted by Koen van Seijen.
Investing in Regenerative Agriculture and Food
395 Alfonso Chico de Guzmán - The ag-tech that brings cows back
Straight from La Junquera farm, in Murcia, Spain, a Walking the Land episode with Alfonso Chico de Guzmán, a regenerative livestock farmer.
It starts as a hobby. So, you take a few cows just like someone in the city would take a cat or dog or a chihuahua, and it slowly gets out of hand. But what really enables this kind of grazing in these circumstances is technology, virtual fencing, virtual shepherding to be precise. This is ag-tech done right. It enables farmers to hold more complexity on the land. In this landscape it would be impossible to have these animals outside year-round because you would have to fence it. You have to drill, and basically it takes a week to put in a fence that the cows maybe use for two days. So that’s not a very good multiple.
So, this is a story about the reintroduction of animals as a tool, with all the animal welfare worked out, on a farm that has been transitioning to perennials, transitioning away from annual crops, and seems to have found the puzzle pieces to actually make it thrive. And now the question is: how to get more cows? How to get sturdier cows? How to get stronger cows that can survive outside and thrive outside? And that is surprisingly difficult. Getting cows from too far away almost guarantees that they won’t adapt quickly and won’t thrive.
==========================
In Investing in Regenerative Agriculture and Food podcast show we talk to the pioneers in the regenerative food and agriculture space to learn more on how to put our money to work to regenerate soil, people, local communities and ecosystems while making an appropriate and fair return.
==========================
👩🏻💻 YOUR OUR WEBSITE
💪🏻 SUPPORT OUR WORK
- Join Gumroad
- Share it
- Give a 5-star rating
- Buy us a coffee… or a meal!
==========================
🎙 LISTEN TO OUR PODCAST AND SUBSCRIBE TO OUR CHANNEL OR WATCH IT ON 📽️ our YouTube channel
==========================
FOLLOW US!
==========================
The above references an opinion and is for information and educational purposes
Thoughts? Ideas? Questions? Send us a message!
Find out more about our Generation-Re investment syndicate:
https://gen-re.land/
Thank you to our Field Builders Circle for supporting us. Learn more here
Feedback, ideas, suggestions?
- Twitter @KoenvanSeijen
- Get in touch www.investinginregenerativeagriculture.com
Join our newsletter on www.eepurl.com/cxU33P!
Support the show
Thanks for listening and sharing!
What does it take for a large, extremely dry, challenging farm to reintroduce animals when everyone, including their grandmother and grandfather, says, you can't. This landscape will never sustain animals outside, let alone cows outside year-round. They can never survive, there's not enough grass, there's not enough to eat, etc. etc. It starts, interestingly enough, as a hobby. So you take a few cows, as one does, just like someone in the city will take a cat, a dog, or a chihuahua, and it slowly gets out of hand. But then what it really enables this kind of grazing in these kinds of circumstances is technology. Virtual fencing or virtual shepherding, to be precise. This is AgTech done right. This enables farmers to hold more complexity on their land. In this landscape, it would be impossible to have animals outside year-round because you have to fence it. And I don't know if you have ever tried to put a stick in the ground on a very, very dry farm, but it's not fun. You have to drill, and basically it takes a week to put in a fence that the cows maybe use for a day or two. That's not a very good multiple. But it's not all tech. You need a really good, in this case, young cowboy, to manage the cows, the grazing plan, and really make it work. And then there's a lot of trial and error followed to figure out how to integrate the cows into the rest of the farm. They love to clean up the grain fields after harvest, or when the grain crop actually fails, they eat the whole but smaller grain. They feed on oak leaves, they love almonds, which is probably not such a good idea. They thrive as mothers and do really well growing a herd. Alfonso hasn't cracked the code yet on flavor. When does it make sense to harvest the cows? How fat should they need to be? And is that even possible with the limited amount of grass available? Or do you send them elsewhere, potentially to a feedlot to get fat, which of course Alfonso hates, or to another farm with more grass? All huge questions. But even with the current prices and even with the current practices, this all makes financial sense already. And it makes even more financial sense than grain at the moment, which is very traditional in this region and really, really, really struggles in the last years. So this is a story about reintroduction of animals as a tool with all the animal welfare figured out on a farm that has been transitioning to perennials and has been transitioning away from annual crops. And it seems they have found most of the puzzle pieces to actually make it thrive. And now the question is: how do you get more cows? How do you get more sturdy cows? How do you get more strong cows that can survive outside and thrive outside? And that's surprisingly difficult. Getting cows from too far away almost guarantees that they won't adapt quickly and don't thrive. And yes, there's work to do. Are the numbers large enough to see an impact on the land? Not yet. Can we see that the land is not suffering with the animals on top? Absolutely. What's the maximum carrying capacity? Nobody knows this really. They are grazing a landscape where cows have disappeared or moved inside and where even sheep are disappearing. How are you going to manage these landscapes at scale? How are we going to support against fires and really impact the landscape? Join us on a fascinating walking the land episode with a Regenerative Livestock Farmer. This is the Investing in Regenerative Agriculture and Food Podcast, where we learn more on how to put money to work to regenerate soil, people, local communities, and ecosystems while making an appropriate and fair return.
SPEAKER_01:This podcast series explores the key role of animals in the food and agriculture system of the future. This series is co-produced and supported by the Data Mars Sustainability Foundation. Find out more on Datamars Dot Foundation or in the link below.
SPEAKER_03:Welcome to another walk in the land. I've said special way too many times, so I'm not going to say it. We're in a beautiful landscape, a challenging landscape, and we're going to walk with Alfonso, a bit of his land, and to see some animals. So welcome here, welcome Alfonso on the show. I we had Yannick, your partner in life and in business on, and but never managed to get you on yet. And I didn't want to let this opportunity pass by to talk about a role of animals, which is something very close to you. And of course, also about as we pass by a massive piece of cow manure, which is on the road, it should be in the field. Are you that are you would you move it? You're not that focused. And a bit of grain spinach. Yeah. From the harvest in the summer. From the harvest. So anything, anyway, welcome to another Walking Land episode with Alfonso. Welcome, Alfonso. Thank you very much, Kun. It's a pleasure to be in the podcast. It's such a nice morning, and you can you're gonna hear some birds, you're gonna hear some cows for sure. Probably not too much else, I'm imagining, in terms of road traffic here. Just to paint a bit of a picture, of course, this is a an audio medium you might be listening. This is in your car or gardening or farming in the tractor, maybe on a horse, who knows? But definitely you you can see what we see. So can you paint a bit of a visual picture of what we see now? What's the landscape like? Where are we? And what should people imagine when they close their eyes while listening to this episode today?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, so we are in one of the biggest plots of the farm we have. It has 90 hectares of arable land, which are grains, that we are going to transform this year, part of it into permanent grassland. And we see also the mountain of the farm that has a lot of oak trees, some pine trees, and we are now at 1100 and something meters over sea level, and we are looking at the mountain near us that the top is 1500. Wow. Yeah, this area is that we are looking, the north face is the province of Murcia, and the south face right there is Almería and Granada, that both of them are Andalucía. And we see the cows in front of us. We have about 70 cows.
SPEAKER_03:Wow. And this is a high and dry farm in that sense. Water is a huge piece. How you have had a really good year, you said, in terms of grain production on record, or the record year basically, since the record started keeping. What do you grow just to give a bit of perspective to people? Of course, I will link the conversation with Yannick below as well, but just to give a bit of perspective, besides the 70 cows, what do you mostly grow here?
SPEAKER_00:So, well, also about what you said of the a very good year. We had before the three worst years consecutive one after the other on the record. And then fortunately, last autumn of 2024 started raining. Then we had a dry winter, but then we had a very humid spring. For us, all of this very humid means that in total, in the whole year, we had 400 millimeters of rain, which was fantastic. And with that, we managed to have the best harvest that we ever recorded in the farm of grains, almonds, and aromatic plants. Wow. So yeah, it was really nice. It gave us a bit of oxygen after three very bad years.
SPEAKER_03:It's not enough, obviously. So you do almonds, aromatics, which got turned into essential oils and grains. And because I think I saw some pictures being shared probably on LinkedIn, etc., of the rains in last autumn. How was it very, as we see now, a lot of water coming in, huge outbursts, like very significant quantities at the time? Was that as well? And how did you manage to capture it? I know you've done a lot of work on water management to capture the precious. Oh, is he a dung beetle? I think, or another beetle.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:Anyway, a lot of work on how to capture the precious drops that you get. How was the rain? Was it nice and steady, or was it a huge chunk of it?
SPEAKER_00:In Valencia, it was really bad because they had the I think some areas I heard something about between 500 and 700 millimeters of rain in one day.
SPEAKER_03:Which is what more than you get in a year, yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Exactly. We didn't get that. In our case, it was one of those strong rain events that we do get almost every autumn, which is quite normal, but we only got 40 liters. We have had other years, days like that of 100, 120. Okay. But no, it was not very bad for us that time. And we do have a lot of ponds and trails. Ponds we recently made built another 40 this autumn. Sorry, this summer. We are going to walk past many of them as well.
SPEAKER_03:So you're hoping for some good rains in the autumn again, of course.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, so in total, we have about 150 ponds in all the land, and we would like to keep building more and more. That helps a lot. And also, we used to have only grains, but we've been moving more into perennials like the almonds and the aromatic plants, and especially the Spanish lavender and the rosemary. We have been planting them in plots that have a lot of erosion and that are a bit more steep, and that helps a lot to prevent and to keep the water in and reduce erosion. So a mix of those things and more.
SPEAKER_03:So erosion control through growing aromatic plants is, of course, a double win.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:And let's say this quote unquote, I'm doing air quotes, nobody sees that. Recipe of what works in this context. Just to go a bit back in history when you came back to the farm or onto the farm, decided, okay, I'm gonna try to figure out what the future of farmer farming looks like in this region on this land. What were your first attempts, or where did you go for inspiration, or like how did aromatics get into that or perennial crops? What was the path towards trying to figure out and think actually now we know a few pieces of the puzzle that work?
SPEAKER_00:Well, at the beginning I tried to let's diversify it as much as possible, find out what else grows here and what techniques work here. So it was a lot of traveling basically to other farms nearby, but also a bit further away. So there we got a lot of inspiration and learned a lot from other farms that were doing ponds, others that were doing the aromatics, other halmons, pistachios, pacos, and it has been basically learning a lot of what other people were doing and then trying to adapt it here because and when was that?
SPEAKER_03:When was your travel?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, no, of course. I still travel to find what other people do. Now with cows, it's it has been a big learning curve in the last two years because they started as a hobby 10 years ago. That after a long time.
SPEAKER_03:Some people get, I don't know, a cat or some rabbits, but yeah, having cows as a hobby. I know Benedict has a few Benedict Birds or a few milk cows for like personal use and grazing them very specifically in some agroforestry pieces. You could call it a hobby, but also like self-sufficiency. How does how do you get a cow as a hobby?
SPEAKER_00:Well, we had a lunch in Vélez Blanco organized by Belal, I think it was nine years ago or ten.
SPEAKER_03:Al Belal is the one of the is a fund or it's a cooperative now?
SPEAKER_00:An association.
SPEAKER_03:It's an association of a lot of region-focused farmers in the in this whole area, right?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, exactly. And I think there's more than four or five hundred farmers now involved. Yeah, it keeps growing. And we've always been part of it and involved in it and learn a lot through it, still and still are. And in that lunch that they organize, there was Astrid Bach, a good friend of ours, and also she has been involved in bringing back a lot of very endangered species, like the Iberian Lynx and others. And then there was this very convincing priest in the lunch, Paco Martinez Botella. I had no idea where this conversation was going to, okay. And then he had a few cows, and then he was saying of the importance of keeping the traditions and this endangered species of cows, the Murciano Levantina, and that there were more Iberian lynxes, a lot more than Murciano Levantina cows, and that we had to do something about it.
SPEAKER_02:That triggered you for sure.
SPEAKER_00:After a few beers and uh finishing the lunch, somehow I promised him I was going to buy a few of those and help him get the breed back. And then I bought three calves, and yeah, it started like that. Then the three calves got a bit bigger.
SPEAKER_03:Then where do you put you at the land, of course, but like after deciding to bring back cows, because cows are grazers and ruminants, have always been part of this landscape, but not the last few decades, probably or more. Yeah, like when you say, Okay, this is a hobby, so you need to find a place for them to eat and to be. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:And so, where did you start? Well, we also have a few horses, they were more for fun at the time. So we put them, they were tiny in the stable of the horses, but they were not getting along so well. And then we moved them to that plot we see behind that has nine hectares and has a fence around, and we had them there. And at the beginning, I was giving them food every day, and then one Christmas I traveled for two weeks and I didn't give them any food, and I saw that they were fatter than when I was doing that. So I realized uh the less you give them, the better they are.
SPEAKER_03:So was it on purpose or you just forgot?
SPEAKER_00:You know, I was away for 15 days and they they had to eat the grass that was there, which was not great, but they did. And I realized that until then they were just waiting for me to give them the food and not really adapting to what they had around. And then those cows turned into a few more cows, and two years ago we had 25 cows, and then that was a very complicated hobby, and I couldn't manage that anymore in my free time. So we hired a cowboy, and then after two weeks, he said, Okay, this is great, but what do I do with 25 cows? Like, I uh after two hours, this is all fixed, and we need more cows. So, this breed of the Murciano Levantina, we couldn't find more because there's now about 50 left in the world. We have 25. Wow, and the idea is to keep growing more, but then we bought other cows that are very tough ones from other mountains nearby that direction in the province of Albacete, about 50 kilometers that way. And we brought them here, we bought 75 cows, and now we have about these hundred cows and about 50 calves. We are keeping all the females because we seem that they adapted really well here, and the ones that are born here they adapt much better than the ones that we are buying from other places, which is very interesting.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, when you say much better adapted, because we had a long conversation with Fred Provenza a while back now. On and he was saying that very specifically on cows that have multi-generational cows, let's say, on farm. Of course, it's difficult when there were no cows before, but at least second generational, they get a lot of knowledge from landscape, what to eat, not to eat, how to behave, and of course, genetically, probably more adapted to so when you say they're more adapted, what how do you see that? Or how do you how does that manifest itself?
SPEAKER_00:Well, everyone said that we couldn't have cows here because the climate, the soil is not adapted for that, and that's it.
SPEAKER_03:It seems to be a common theme in many of the farmer conversations. Everyone says they can't do something, or you can never have XYZ, then it turns out to be, yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Exactly. So that's why we started as a hobby, and I thought I would never have more than 10 or 20 because if you have to keep feeding them, then yeah, it's gonna be a very expensive hobby. But then these ones that came here, they were came from also a very complicated area, and the ones that have been born here, they well, I gave them food last January because it was getting dry between the last rain of the beginning of November and then the next rain we had in March, and I was getting a bit worried. And I bought two pallets of food, and that was it. That's the only thing I bought for food for these animals in the last 18 months. The rest they manage to get the leftovers of the grain fields, a little bit of prairies that we have here and there. They can eat also the leaves of the oak trees, which other breeds don't like that. They we also get them in a wetland area we have in a farm of a neighbor 10 kilometers away, and then they eat all the reeds really well. And they are also always on the move when they have these no-fence colours, and that allows us also to have cows here, otherwise, it would be impossible because they have to walk maybe three, four thousand hectares a year to fill up their bellies, and there's no fences in this area because the way the sheep used to be managed was with a shepherd being with them all day and a dog, yeah, and a dog, but which is actually we'll double-click on that.
SPEAKER_03:Definitely shout out to No Fence, who we had twice on the podcast, I think. And we managed to be a small investor through Generation Re in the company itself, and be a small part of the loan to put together the colors here as well. So it's really interesting to see the cows, they're super calm, and yes, I noticed, but I didn't really fully process there are no fences, no, and so no offence, huh? But it no, but it's really visually striking to not even see a single wire, or even because you're saying basically fencing this, of course, would be utterly impossible, like a small electricity wire with sticks, etc. Would that be a possibility for you?
SPEAKER_00:Or even manually that is but the problem is that also on these very dry years, when we have to do that on someone else's farm, that we can uh get the grazing rights. Maybe we can fence a hill of 50 hectares, it takes us a week, but they're gonna eat it in three days. So it's impossible. And how many people do we have to put that to fence that temporarily to then move it in in very green areas? Maybe you can put the fence for three days in half an hour. But here the fence for three days takes you a week.
SPEAKER_03:So this is truly enabling technology because you could never graze the neighbor, you could never graze this land at this scale.
SPEAKER_00:Otherwise, we couldn't have cows, or we could have cows, but we would have to feed them, I don't know, six months a year or something. With this, they're always outside, they're always grazing. And and yeah, that last year I bought these two pallets of food for them in January, but I shouldn't have done it. Now, definitely I'm not gonna do it again. And I realize we know also more places we keep learning because we've learned from other farms that have cows and also in dry areas, but we don't have a lot of examples right here, so we keep learning a lot every year on how to do it. And now we realize that they're just the perfect animal for this area, and with this technology, they're I think the perfect business at the moment, and our idea is to keep growing to maybe 500 cows in the next years, and maybe more in the future because there's less and less sheep. Sheep are really disappearing very fast from the area. There used to be around 120,000 sheep in the area, now there's about 10,000 or maybe less. So there's a lot of room for other animals to graze that.
SPEAKER_03:Because that's what the cat, because that's what everybody said, you cannot have cows, and usually with grazing, and in this case, very interesting because it's integrated into an arable farm. And you said some of the fields, and we'll get to that, um, will be turned into permanent pasture, but you see, there's more space, you have more carrying capacity for more animals on your and adjacent farms where you can get grazing rights.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, so on a even in a dry year that these last three dry years that we didn't have grains, we still had enough food for the cows, and that's what we've realized. Because maybe you don't have yeah, the crop of the grain because it got too small, so the combiner couldn't harvest it, but then you have all of that available for cows, not just or land, maybe it rained too late, and then what came out was wheat, but not the grain because it dried out during the winter, and then you have a lot of grass for cows as well.
SPEAKER_03:So, even in the worst years, we had a lot of food for cows, and on the good years, we also have a lot of food for cows, and with all this amount of land available at the moment, and the technology to basically send them with a click on a butt because this is virtual fencing just for people, you basically pull the lines of the fencing on your phone or on whatever device, and by GPS and slightly buzzing around the neck of the cow. They're being sent to where they need to be, and basically, yeah, you can put them almost anywhere as long as they can walk there, basically.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, we still have to move them by horse and dogs when we move them from one farm to a different farm, but once they they are in that farm and they stay for one or two months in different plots, we keep moving changing the plots with the phone.
SPEAKER_03:Which is yeah, I remember you showing it at I think RFSI Brussels last year, not this one. Like, on like the cows are now here, and I can move them to there if I want to. It really feels like magic. That's what technology should feel like. Yeah, and not a lot of ag tech, let's say technology for farmers feels like that. I think that it enables you to do something that you maybe GPS steering, but like you could absolutely not do before.
SPEAKER_00:No, but and in this case, we were a bit skeptical, like it cannot be that good, but it is better.
SPEAKER_03:But you saw it at a neighbor, if I remember correctly, right? There was a neighbor that had them at the colours, and or somebody nearby, and we're like, okay, if they don't fall off constantly, and if he or she is happy with it, then I might look into it.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, he had it with 20 cows in a mountain near Morataya, another village, and the it was working pretty well for him. He had it for a few months, and but yeah, they were a bit worried about the connectivity and the phone signal, which is not great, yeah, which is really bad, but still diplomatic, yeah. Yeah, so you cannot make, for example, very small plots because of the phone signal. Yeah, we have to make bigger plots than we want, and also these cows were used to live in a mountain of 3,000 hectares without being managed when we bought these 70 extra cows. So now when you get them in a smaller plot, they fight a lot with each other and they have big horns. So I think it's good that the technology is slowly we are going into making them yeah, graze closer to each other.
SPEAKER_03:But yeah, because you want that impact, you want that impact on a piece and then move on quickly, which of course you can do, but if the connectivity doesn't allow you to have them, yeah. So you need more cows basically.
SPEAKER_00:I need more cows, yeah. But it's impossible to buy cows, it's quite difficult to buy cows nowadays, they became really expensive, and there's not a lot of availability. Plus, in our case, we're quite limited because we have to buy cows from other places that are as challenging as this one. According to other cow owners, they say this is the most challenging place in Spain for cows that they've seen, that they haven't seen cows in another place like this, so that makes me very proud.
SPEAKER_03:So you have to grow them yourself, basically.
SPEAKER_00:That's gonna be mostly inorganic growth, or that that is our idea, but then we are gonna grow too slow, and I'm a bit impatient, and I see the opportunity, and I see that with the same management, with the same cowboy, that he's a genius, and he's only 23 years old. Wow, how did you find him?
SPEAKER_03:Because I don't think it's easy to find somebody that leans into let's just let's say holistic managed grazing and technology and is under 70, just to be proud.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, well, a friend recommended him to me, and yeah, he was 21 at the time, and I thought, yeah, but how long is this guy gonna last? And after this really tough job, but yeah, he surprised me a lot. So, with him managing the daily management of the cows, I'm yeah, now happy to move to 300 if we can. He feels confident with 300, and from them we have to see if he needs a person to help him, if we want to expand to more cows, but he thinks that 300 is quite easy. Also, with the amount of food we have even on the driest year, we can easily have 300 cows at the moment with the same cost, more colours and buying cows, but uh food-wise and uh labor-wise, the same, which is of course a very interesting and how has been the effect on the land from the manure, the trampling, the grazing, or has it been not enough yet?
SPEAKER_03:Let's say to it's a bit of a leading question. I think it's what have you seen or not seen?
SPEAKER_00:I think it's a bit soon to know because to since we have a big herd, it's only very curious, huh? Two years ago.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, but sorry, do you now see the fence line? Do you know where it is? Do you know where they yeah?
SPEAKER_00:At this moment, it's all this plot, which is really big, because it's a serial plot that it has to be now tilled and spread the manure to see it again in the next weeks. So now they're only gonna be able to be here for 10 days. There's food here for a lot more than 10 days. So now we just open everything that they choose because we have to till it fast. Yeah, if it would be a permanent pasture, we would be doing it differently, only a smaller plot and moving it max every three days, but preferably earlier. But in this case, it's everything. They we also have to work in that case with the connectivity and the water points. Yeah, so we only have one water point down there, and in the future, especially with the plots of grains that we want to turn into permanent pasture, we have to do some that's another cost, of course, getting water up and down to place.
SPEAKER_03:But sorry, the impact on the land you were saying, it's a bit too early yet.
SPEAKER_00:It's a bit too early, but I think it's really good. And in some areas that are permanent permanent pasture, sorry, it has been it looks really good, especially in all the area of the reeds. So, what came out after they ate all of that in the summer of that wetland was a lot bigger amount and better because it was a kind of a wetland that was not managed for seven years. It used to be burned before every year, but that is not allowed for seven years. So then the owner didn't know what to do, and all that reed became also quite old and dry.
SPEAKER_03:So, actually, a fire risk, yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, and then we moved the cows in, and he we were all quite amazed that they left it all like empty, and it was 20 hectares of reeds. And also, the association of bird watchers were really happy with that because they say that reeds have a lot of biodiversity of birds the first and second year, but after that, that it gets a bit old, then the biodiversity declines, and now it is going to be yeah, a lot better for it. So it seems so far a love story between the older, the bird watchers, and us.
SPEAKER_03:It doesn't happen very often that cows are part of a bird love story. There's the US, the uh Audifon, or what are they called, the bird watching society that's supporting a lot of regen grazers because of the impact on biodiversity? We hear some birds actually. I see a lot of dung beetles still around traveling on the to the next to the next one. And then on the market side, like how you've been building up the herd, obviously. How easy is it? Have you been selling? How does the market in Spain look at regen beef, or are you able to sell it in the normal markets for nice prices? What happens with the one bad day? Let's see.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, so so far we've had to sell it them at normal prices. I haven't been able to find yet a region market. There's other people doing it, and I think it's working very well for them, but I still don't have yeah, like social media that I think I'm gonna do for cows of the farm to post and engage people that would like to buy some of the meat. I just found a butcher that is willing to work with us in that sense. So far, we sold him a very old cow that was 17 years old and then couldn't have calves anymore. So that when we got her fat, in this case, it had to be with uh how it can buy animal feed, so it couldn't be grass-fed. And he was quite happy with that. He wants to buy those animals, so the cows that are after that age, that yeah, they're getting a bit older, then there is a market for that, but not branded as a regenerative. And in this case, that we are keeping all the females, and the idea is to do sell the male ones, we have to see how that goes because uh this climate is very good to grow to to support the mothers, the cows, but to get a calf fat and with fat inside of the meat is a bit more challenging. I think they they would need either different genetics, more angus, or also more grass, and we cannot always guarantee that. So we do have enough food for the cows to survive, to to have a calf, to breed them and all that. But after the calf is six months old, they need a lot more food to then get fat in, let's say, one and a half or two years, and I don't think we have that every year yet, or ever, maybe. But we tried with this genetics to put a bit more angus genes in them. We bought two angus, one was seven year months old, and he had a tough first weeks, but then he adapted. But then we got another one that was four years old to to already start mating with the cows, and that one in the first move that we had to move from one farm to the other, that was 15 kilometers. He got a wound in one of the legs, one of the one of the hooves, uh you call it, and that got infected, and that got worse. And today we had vets coming because it was not a cheap bull, as you can imagine. And yeah, we're trying to save him. We can check him out later, but I'm afraid that he might die this week. And I'm very sad about it, but yeah, indeed, it's not only genetics, it's indeed that this one came. The bull was very healthy, it was very good, but he was raised in a beautiful day in Córdoba, which he could get fat without moving a lot, yeah, with a lot of grass. And then he came here and he probably thought, what is this that we have to move 15 kilometers to get from one place to another, and a lot of stones, and not that good quality of grass? So I realized that for future bulls I have to always buy them smaller, and I cannot speed up the process as much as I wanted to.
SPEAKER_03:No, there's a waiting there. And how does the butcher wise just asking? Because we've done an episode with Benedict in the field and included the shot as well because they shoot in the field. How does it work here? Do you need to bring them to the butcher, or how does the let's say end of life? Sorry to get a bit graphic, but it's an important part of the process. Well, how does that happen?
SPEAKER_00:I would really like to do what the Benedict does, but I think what I asked so far here is not possible. Also, the laws depend a lot for each state, it's its province as well. And in Murcia, like alone to get my license for cows, extensive cows grazing outside, they were very confused. Yeah. Because they were, but how many square meters of barn do you have? So none. They are outside all year around, they have trees, they have stuff. Ah, okay. And where are gonna be your silos for the food? Well, they also don't exist. I bought a pellet last year. It took us two. Don't worry about it. It took us like two years to get that license because they didn't understand that was possible.
SPEAKER_03:Um yeah, ask about shooting in the field, there will be uh a few headache further.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, yeah, because in this province near the coast, they do have a lot of feedlots, so that is what is very common. There is probably a few hundred thousand cows or calves in this province, but are only in feedlots. Almost none are outside.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, yeah, I passed by quite a few by car. And so, yeah, how is that like legislation-wise moving them? But you managed to get around it or you managed to convince, or how has been the reaction also from veterinarians, etc., to this really new or old, depending on, and with technology and no fences. How has been that process?
SPEAKER_00:It worked for a small amount of cows like what we have now. But now that we would like to expand to a much bigger herd, we are still stuck. So I am now for one and a half years trying to expand the license to have 400 cows under one license, and I don't have it yet. But I hope that we can get it soon. And we can go that way. These are some of the ponds. Yeah, this was older and those we made over the summer. And we can go that way. The vultures ate something here.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, I see some bones. Like wildlife in terms of wildlife returning to the farm in general, not just with the cows, but with the region transition. How has it been? This looks like a sheep, right?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, maybe a sheep of a neighbor wandered here on the vultures.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, maybe got dropped as well. No, it would have broken more.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:Like ground animals that would have killed it because the vulture doesn't kill, isn't it?
SPEAKER_00:Foxes, but that's quite a big sheep.
SPEAKER_03:Or it died already.
SPEAKER_00:We saw a wolf one and a half years ago, but yeah, seems that it's coming and going and not staying long term.
SPEAKER_03:Is there an issue with uh with sheep?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, he ate a lot of sheep and two dogs also of a farmer.
SPEAKER_03:And with the cows?
SPEAKER_00:Nothing. No, I think if there is an option, yeah. I if I would be a wolf, I would eat a lot of sheep before getting next to one of these cows. And that is an interesting thing because we were talking about getting angus genetics to be able to have grass-fed, grass-finished beef in the future, but they don't have horns. So if we do, if this wolf calls a few of his friends and then they we end up having some wolf packs here, I think without horns will be a lot more difficult. Yeah, yeah. Because these ones we see when we get the dogs near them to move them. If they have calves, they make a round, a bit like the Roman legionnaires, and they have the horns out, and there's no way you can move them. But if they don't have horns, I think they will be a lot more vulnerable.
SPEAKER_03:I think you can have a mix like what we saw with again with Benedict. There's their single line, electricity lines, just to move them, not for the keeping the wolves out. And there are a lot of wolves. He has a lot of wolves, a lot of wolves, but they have the Salonar, Salinar style, I think. And they are really experienced French, really big horns, way bigger than these ones, like these really curly ones. And they are the bodyguards of the Angus. Like they stay around, they know what's coming, they're much more intelligent, they know also when the shot is coming for not one of them, but for one of the angus. So there's also a mixed potential, like as long as you have a few awake ones, that the genetics are not bred for stupidity, as Benedict likes to say. Not my words, but the ones that actually are used to managing, of course, there's a balance there. Yeah, and I don't know wolf packs here, how they would operate, but yeah, it's an interesting one because you make a choice for grass fat and production, and suddenly it becomes a meal for somebody else.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, and maybe yeah, it takes us decades to to figure out the system, or maybe we cannot have it all. Yeah, and maybe we can. I talked with another rancher that has that he does the grass-fed and grass finished and has a market for regenerative beef in Spain and everything, and and he's doing an amazing job. And he came two years ago to advise us, and I said, Yeah, I want to do grass-finished beef. And he said, after looking at all the landscape for a few seconds, yes, Alfonso, but with which grass? Okay, that's a very good question, indeed. We had these three horrible years of drought, which there is not a lot of grass. So, indeed, they were eating the reeds, the leftovers of the grains, the leave the leaves of the branches of the oak trees, but that is not enough to have a nice, juicy, fat steak. So, maybe an option is in the future we grow the calves, and after six months, they move to other farms that they can get grass finished and grass fed for the next one or two years, that they have more grass, which could also be okay, or maybe we could rent out those farms somewhere near Andalusia 200 kilometers away, which people used to do that, and that was a very common thing to do to move hundreds of kilometers between winter and summer for better pastures. We are doing it in a very small scale. Yeah, you're right. 30, 40 kilometers max, but but yeah, maybe we could do longer range for the calves.
SPEAKER_03:When did you decide to bring that transumana like back to the valley to move cows from summer to winter and winter to summer pastures?
SPEAKER_00:Well, because we have this other farm 30 kilometers down the valley, and it is 200 meters lower over sea level, it is much warmer. So part of the year, because we have a lot of almond trees, and there the cows they cannot have a lot of food in the fields. But in the mountain, we have a lot of espartograss, and then in the spring they they have a lot of these sprouts that have a lot of sugar, and then it's a nice boost, and that happened also a month earlier than in this farm. So we move them there, they stay for about a month and something, and then they come back here, yeah, and it's a lot of fun, also.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, because you take the horses out, it becomes a whole uh I've seen pro photos and videos, etc., but it becomes a whole yeah trip, a journey to move cattle because that's what we used to do. We used to move with cattle or with animals.
SPEAKER_00:And then we're getting trained for doing it bigger and longer in the future as well.
SPEAKER_03:So we don't have the angus that cannot walk 15 kilometers without hurting himself.
SPEAKER_00:And that is interesting. We found that out now with a smaller because otherwise you can make one of these big mistakes of buying 500 hangus from somewhere, bringing them here, and then you have half of them die. I think organic growth in this case is a lot less risky, but yeah.
SPEAKER_03:Figuring out the recipe and the pieces that work in a context where nobody else can help you because nobody knows or nobody has done anything like that at scale in the last whatever year. So it's research and development. You want to do it in a at a scale that failing doesn't cost you to farm and a lot of sleepless nights. And then when it works, and when you find out the pieces that work, then it's about yeah, how do you scale up as rapidly as the landscape can sustain?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, now the question is because we figured out many things, is how do we where do we buy more cows? So if we want to buy 200 more cows, where do we find them? And that is right now is the challenge. Because I hope the license I can get it soon, but then once I get it.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, so it's mostly almost a stock, like advanced agroforestry systems, like they need a tree nursery because they can't get the quality and the quantity of tree species they want. And you're saying actually it's difficult to find the quality and quantity of these types of cows that are robust, used to mountains, and used to eat, not the most amazing grass carpet, let's say.
SPEAKER_00:I think 80 extra, it might be not too difficult when because the person that sold me these other 75, he has 80 more, and he said he wanted to sell, but then the prices of the meat went so high that he said, Okay, I'm gonna wait a bit longer. And then he also said, Yeah, but I'm very sad when I do sell, then what do I do? Because he's 67 now, and he's thinking about retiring, but not very convinced yet. And I told him he can come and visit them whenever he wants. That is not enough.
SPEAKER_03:You can ride with them, you can and and so how long would like naturally growing the herd take? Like, why is that too slow?
SPEAKER_00:Well, we made an Excel sheet that with what we have. I think we could have 300 in 2030.
SPEAKER_03:Okay, yeah, that's a bit slow, and you're impatient, as you said.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, and for example, and the cowboy is doing such an amazing job. I would like to pay him more money as well.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, and to keep him excited. To do that, you we need more cows. Yeah, so it's a chance. So is anybody in this area listening might have some robust mountain cows just to give off on so call. You never know. We have 3,000 people listening to this. So we'll see. And then other like what's on the horizon, looking at the horizon. We climbed actually, and we see a lot of very interesting dams you build, like. Pond that will be ponds, hopefully. Like very strategically around trees, basically, around the lower part where it will flood or will rain. Because erosion, I think, is quite an issue here, right?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. And all of this is the area that is gonna turn into permanent grassland this year. So we're now gonna till it because we want to establish a mix of grasses that we are interested in and that they're also local here and they could thrive. And I think we could speed this up maybe two years to compare to if we would just leave it like this and manage it with only grazing. I think we could also have a wonderful grassland, but maybe a bit later.
SPEAKER_03:Do you envision to ever reseed, or will this be let's see?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, let's see. I think with the farms that I visited, one of Manuel Troya in El Pajaratillo, he was doing such uh an amazing job and uh had such a good results with that. And he he didn't seed anything. In his case, he only managed the transition from grains to grasslands just with cows. He's also much more experienced with that than us, so I think it would take us longer. And in this case, we're gonna see if we can do it faster with seeding something, at least some of the plots, and then we are gonna compare other plots, we were gonna do it naturally, and then we see what goes better. Of course, it will be cheaper, the other one. And also we have to see with the local authorities how do we declare this because permanent grassland is also not very common in this province. That's an issue, huh?
SPEAKER_03:Like, how do you because then if you ever change your mind and want to put whatever in it, per annual like annual or not, etc., it might be quite a hassle. I think that's one of the reasons many keep like at least do an annual every X years because then it stays officially in the books. Like all these teching enterprises, of course, nobody's used to that anymore because you put all the animals inside, grow the feed somewhere every year with a lot of NPKs, and then bring it to the barn, and you're saying, Yeah, we're actually doing this and that. Uh that would be interesting. And any ideas or plans to introduce or include more perennials in these permanent pastures, like more trees, more fodder for the animals, in that kind of sense, in terms of agroforestry or silver pasture in that sense?
SPEAKER_00:Well, we had a few plants for it, and some students helped us with that. And one of the conclusions was with plants that we have, it grows well, but then there are salt bushes, and they have so much salt that we've tried with some adult plants and the cows, they do bite it, but like once a day. They don't want to bite it a lot more. So I think it would help us maybe not having to add salt rocks to them, but not much more as forage. And also, what we've seen is that what works the best by far are these oak trees. They do eat a lot of their leaves. Um, we have been planting a lot of them, but until they look like a tree, it will take, I think, more than my lifetime.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, so that's they grow really slow here. So that's not uh an option in that sense to and any other fast growing ones that could be, but then it competes with the grass probably because the challenging circumstances. Is shadow or shade an issue in terms of heat stress for them?
SPEAKER_00:Not here, in some other plots, there is no shade, but I've been very surprised to realize that in the summer, when you have 35 degrees at 2 p.m., they're in the sun, and they are not in the shade, and more in the evenings they go in the shade. And I I asked the uh Ismael, the cowboy, why did he think that is? And he said, Well, that's obvious. It's because in the sun, when it's so hot, there's no flies, they're in the shade, and then later in the day is the other way around, and they prefer the heat than the flies. And I guess it's also this breed that they can stand the heat because someone told me that if they were be like, for example, Frisian cows or milk, they would probably die.
SPEAKER_03:They would die and at least suffer tremendously in terms of production.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, but they have the shade, and then you see all of them in the full sun being so hot. And yeah, I thought they were not very smart at the beginning, but yeah, it's their choice.
SPEAKER_03:It's their choice, and they figure it out. So, no yeah, silver pasture, the oak trees work really well, but they're too slow, and so you haven't found like the ideal salbuses could work, but not at a scale, not maybe that much.
SPEAKER_00:When they escape, they love eating the almond trees, but I prefer that they just give almonds instead of yes, probably for a high-value crop like that. Yeah, well, for example, we're gonna try this winter with all the leftovers of the sage after we distill it. You see those mountains next to the distillery. Yeah, yeah. Those months are each batch that we already distilled, and each batch comes in a trailer. So part of them are Spanish lavender, which that is very woody, and that we would compost it with the manure of the horses and some of the manure of the bulls that we separate them from the cows, and we have them there. And but the sage, once you extract the essential oil that is on the leaves, then it's much more attractive for the animals to eat it. So, our idea is also to see if they would like to eat that in the winter now because they are quite fat and they have more juicy things. We gave them that and they didn't try it. But also, if you give them straw now, they also don't need it. But I think in winter, when everything gets a bit tougher, maybe they find it nice to eat it.
SPEAKER_03:So they would you're guessing they would eat it after the extraction of the essential oils, and they wouldn't eat it if it was an alive plant somewhere.
SPEAKER_00:No, they never touch it when it's alive because of the essential oil, they don't like it when it has essential oils. Interesting.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, it has a lot of antibiotic, like it's a very good anti-inflammatory, right?
SPEAKER_00:Maybe they do child bushes and they make one bite a day.
SPEAKER_03:They need that's what that's why you give different mineral stones and not mixes, because they select self-select what they need, and they might escape because they really need ailments just because they're sweet and nice, of course. So interesting. Yeah, it's a challenging landscape, but it's fascinating that it works and it works so well. And so not easy, but relatively easy. I think to compare to many other things you did. This is sounds like the more the easier path in that sense.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, and it came out yeah, first as a hobby, and then it looks like it can be a more and more serious business, opposite to other plans that we had with other crops of this is gonna be the thing, and then it's not. In this case, it was the other way around. It's just a little hobby, it will never be a thing. And then I imagine that maybe in the next five years it becomes the bigger business, the biggest business of all the farm. If we continue like this, but also a lot of it depends on this guy on Ismail. If it wouldn't have been for him, of course, I think other cowboys would have said, Yeah, there is no food in this farm, let's start buying food instead of moving them day trips here, day trips there, and doing all of that. He it's it takes someone that really likes doing that and knows how to do it.
SPEAKER_03:And do you get a pushback? I don't know how vocal the vegan movement is in Spain. Do you get pushback for introducing animals or reintroducing animals on a landscape where a lot of people would say we need less?
SPEAKER_00:No, not really. I think we have a lot of vegan people that come to the farm, but I at least I haven't heard them being very critical with this with the management we do of the cows here. And I think it's maybe not also that big of a movement in Spain compared to other countries. You remember that? But for example, we do have the how do you say the this associations pistas nature conservation environmentalists from the area, and it's quite the opposite. They are very pushy that we need to have animals back, and that getting all the sheep out of the system is going to be a disaster. Well, first of all, because of the fires, then also on all the galleys and all these wetlands that all when we have floods, if all of that is so full of dry material, then it gets stuck, and then is when they it makes these big floodings. So they are doing actually the opposite of pushing that there's more animals. And I think the government at the moment uh there's two more farms that want to have cows, and then we'll have the held and managing them near here, and they're a bit confused about why all of a sudden so many people asking for licenses for cows.
SPEAKER_03:Hasn't happened in the last 40 years, yeah. And in terms of yeah, actually, let me because you're looking at the forest. Are you able to graze into the forest as well or into the wood woody lands, or you need to stay on the farm, quote farm? Like what?
SPEAKER_00:No, yeah, you can. In in private land, you definitely can, and they really like it, especially these oak trees. And now, if we get close by, now it's the acorn time. There's a lot of acorns, the pigs like it even more, and they make this wonderful fat in their jamones. But the cows also like it. It's if they eat too much, it's not so easy to digest it. Uh a little bit is is okay. And uh, yeah, because we just heard something, but it was a weird sound, and I was thinking maybe it could be some wildlife coming from the duck, but no, don't see any movement.
SPEAKER_03:What kind of sound did you hear? Now that the podcast's taking an interesting turn. Was it a wolf, a pack of wolves? Stay tuned after the break or not?
SPEAKER_00:It sounded maybe a bit like a deer. But they're a bit more noisy than the rest.
SPEAKER_03:A bit clumsy as well when they move through the interested in other animals like pigs, chickens, is there an or sheep even, is there a wish of you to also diversify there?
SPEAKER_00:I think not for me to manage, but if someone else wants to use the space of the farm to do that, it would be wonderful. But yeah, um, I'm very in love with my cows, and I really would like to yeah, all the other things they are exciting, or they were exciting, but I think nothing can compare to the cows and managing the cows. And I really like horseback riding, and until we had cows, we would just go for a ride walking in circles with no purpose. And yeah, to take the horse and take the city. Exactly, and then you feel like, oh my god, I did this wonderful ride these two days, and it was part of my job, and then it was profitable, and it has a purpose.
SPEAKER_03:So I think nothing can beat that at the moment. If I was able to properly ride a horse, it could have been a riding, riding the land instead of number learning. For next time. And so, in terms of the intensive KAIFO factory farms operators here, is there any pressure on them to close, open up, start grazing? Like you say, two farms, other farms around you now want to start grazing. I guess they're not keif operations. But is there any sign of a movement of more holistic management?
SPEAKER_00:I think so. Yeah, definitely in other areas of Spain that you see more cows, it is definitely happening. And on all of the west side, that there's more data, not these kind of savannas with oak trees. There, there's a lot more people talking about it, courses, it's becoming more and more popular. Here, I think not so much because animals in general are disappearing cheap. But other places, yeah. But yeah, one interesting reflection that Ismael, for example, did this summer, he went for holidays to the north of Spain, near Picos de Europa, near Santander, and he saw a lot of cows, and he was talking with the owners of those cows, and then they said that this was that was the typical area of Spain that you imagine where cows are. Yeah. Very green pastures, mountains. And then they said that for six months a year, they need to have them inside because it's too wet and too cold. And then in the De Estas also said that because of the pigs, many times you need to get the cows out, so the pigs come in to ate all the acorns and all the oak trees. And then talking with my elderly, thinking maybe now this is the best place in Spain to have cows, because it's the only place that you can actually have them outside 12 months a year eating from outside.
SPEAKER_03:But it's great, it's too cold and too wet, but then you go to Ireland or places where there's still a grazing culture. It's also the genetics, and it's also the way, of course, the economy forces you to have certain sizes and certain genetics that don't like to walk or don't like to be wet. But it's hard to believe that they can't can't be outside anymore. It didn't become colder. I think it became warmer in winter. It maybe became wetter because but it's it's crazy.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, so it might be the best place to without no fence, it would not be a place at all possible. But because of this technology, all of a sudden, this whole province that couldn't have cows now might be one of the most interesting places to have cows.
SPEAKER_03:And do you see the other two farms, like people starting to realize that this is uh an enabling technology, just like portable fencing and let's say plastic tubes were and are to bring water, like that, like the little solar panel that we now use. And here it's difficult because it's very dry. But in many places that enabled holistic management, because you can suddenly put fences up in half an hour and you can bring water because cheap pipes are suddenly cheap. Do you see other people switching on to that? Like when you like you you get like shiny in your eyes when you talk about this is possible, and now I can have cows. But is that excitement shared?
SPEAKER_00:Well, I didn't talk this that much yet. I think it's one of the first times that I say it more in public because we were first checking if this was really possible. Exactly. Do they get fat? Does it work? Is it profitable? Does the market buy them? And yeah, so far these two farmers are interested, but the also another reality is that most of the farmers are quite old, tiring, and there's not that many young people. And in the case of cows, a lot of people are a bit scared of cows because the only cows they've seen in this area are the bullfighting cows. That when you do the encierros in the villages, that every little village around here has encierros, which means that they bring with horses like 10 bullfighting cows in the village, and then you have to do a little bit of bullfighting or runaway or this and that, and they're really aggressive. So they're massive, and they're have that idea in their heads that cows are really dangerous and really aggressive because they haven't seen a lot of just meat cows or normal cows. So the people that could do that, I think at the moment are more like Ismael, that he was one of those guys that loves going with horses, getting the bullfighting cows inside their villages, and this and that, and he's not afraid of them. So other people like him that are used to horseback riding, and you do need to be quite a good rider because sometimes you do the last Monday and Tuesday, we had to move the cows. We had to go pick them up, bring them here, change some colors, separate the male calves from the mothers, then bring the mothers back to one place, and the little females to a different place. I think yeah, in two days we did maybe 70 kilometers by horse riding. If you don't if you don't like that, then you cannot have cows here.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, that's a very thank you. And would there be others, let's say, like people like Ismail? Do you see young people getting interested and open to that as well?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, there's a few young guys that are friends of him that they come every now and then to help him because they like it when they have a free day or on some weekends. Yeah, they like it. But they're from he's from another village that is 60 kilometers away, and in that area, that is not as good as this one. So yeah, I don't know if maybe they would be interested in joining and buying a hundred cows and coming to an area like this that you need to get in touch with all the farmers. So we know all our neighbors, and our neighbors one has 700 hectares, the other one has a thousand, the other one 500. So it's easy, and we know them for a long time. So it's easy to get in touch with them, and yeah, and we see them when we have coffee in the bar in the village nearby, often to talk about these things and agree with us. Maybe someone that comes from another village just 60 kilometers away is but who are you? What do you want to do? Cows saying my farm. I don't know.
SPEAKER_03:How difficult is it to convince to like you mentioned grazing rights at the beginning to get access to other people's farms? And how does that work?
SPEAKER_00:Well, here in the beginning, the first year it was with very little plots of people that liked far cows, and then having coffee in the bars, it was like, Hey, and my plot is now, I have a lot of grass, and no one comes with the sheep. Would like you like to bring the cows? And then we started bringing them to one place, another place. Then they were in plots near the road, and then people seeing the cows, and then there was tourists coming from the city of Murcia to come to see cows and to take pictures.
SPEAKER_03:Because for them, it's a service, it's uh do you help them to take care of the grass?
SPEAKER_00:Like, why would they because then it also when they have to till to get seeds again? It's less instead of going two times, let's say, over the field, maybe with one is enough.
SPEAKER_03:So you don't do you have to pay them for the axes, or do you get paid? How does it work?
SPEAKER_00:Or is it at the beginning it was for free, especially all those little plots, and with the bigger farms we pay them, but I must say, because there's no no no other alternative, there's no one else, there's no competition. We pay quite little, so it's almost symbolic. Yeah, uh, but you need something to and well, for example, now with this cow, I gave them the butcher made salami with the meat of the cow and pistachos. Uh and then I gave them a salami to each one, and I think they that's a nice, yeah, it's a nice justice. I think they liked it.
SPEAKER_03:Have you measured? We see a lot of focus around the health aspect, of course, of grass fat and grass finish, so in this case, outside or year-round without any extra feed. Are you leaning into the health aspect of this type of grazing in terms of omega 3, omega 6? Are there is that a thing that's on your mind?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:Taste, of course, flavor.
SPEAKER_00:I'm not doing the shall we go a bit like that and we turn around to we go back towards the calves again.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:So that's definitely something that I really like. The Yannick and I that we read a lot of these studies about how much more healthy it is the grass-fed and grass-finished meat over other one that is more from a feedlot. If we actually buy, well, since we bought butcher our own cow, then we are eating our own cow. But we used to buy from poultry from José Luis that he has the grass-fed, grass finished, the beef, and the chickens as well. Well, the chickens are not grass-finished because they need grains, but they are they're outside, they are pastured uh raised. He's doing some studies that I think he's gonna publish about the difference between one meat and the other. Um, apparently, indeed, oh no, you maybe you know more, you probably know a lot more than me about the.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, there's some there's there was the beef study of the Bionutrient Food Association together with the Days showed indeed massive differences, like it really matters how you manage. And not all grass fat is the same, of course, it's it's partly genetics, etc., but the differences are quite stark. And I think it's interesting because it touches on that health aspect, like it touches on flavor, of course, but also health. And that's a growing topic for many, especially as we're, let's say, chronically ill, most of us, unfortunately. And some people start to look out for nutrient dense quality, nutrient quality, etc. And being able to show that, look, this is not just much more humane, if we can use the word uh environmentally much more sound, the methane side, the water side, everything looks better, but actually it's much better for you as well, yeah, and your children, because that's often an angle, of course, of four people, is very powerful. Of course, not easy, and you need to be very sure, but slowly more of the research is coming out and showing yeah, massive differences.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:Which hopefully then leads to more sales, of course, not to keep it, let's say, elite and only accessible for a higher price, but actually have people know that this is another product, and so you might have to treat it slightly different and see maybe you can buy less supplements, which would be. Nice, or maybe you can, and which suddenly makes it look not so expensive anymore. Like the premium, hopefully, will take care of itself.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I would love to end up having Murciano Levantina cows with their horns, local breed, grass-fed, grass finish, and wonderful meat out. But I think we are we still have some work to do. But how's the flavor? So the flavor is amazing. We did kill a bull that we had, the first one that was otherwise going to start mating with his granddaughters. Yeah, and we were very excited about it, and we that was two, three years ago. And the meat, for example, the searloin was wonderful to eat it fresh, cooking, cooked, but the rest of the meat, the flavor was really good, but it was like eating deer. And we had the only way we managed to make it as a stew for eight to nine hours cooking, otherwise, it was way too hard. It's also true, it was a bull, it was like six years old, and it was not a very good year that he was very fat, it was actually at the end of the summer. So we did, I think, a lot of things wrong. Them being the male, being six years old, and not like at the end of spring when it was he was the fattest. But yeah, they told us that was quite common. Yeah, so that unless it would be angus all of it, or at least 50%, and with a lot of grass, that is the texture we were going to get. And it's wonderful if you like stew a lot, but we've been eating stew for three years. Yeah, and I'll be done with eating stew so often. And I don't know how easy to market that and to sell it in if it's gonna be 50 animals or 100 animals a year.
SPEAKER_03:So, how do you plan to do it? What's the of course harvesting at a different moment, or what's the plan there to keep the quality?
SPEAKER_00:Well, our plan was to get the angus in, but it failed for this year. Next year, we will have the one that is seven months, will be one year and seven months, and I think he will be able to mate with a lot of the cows and see if that gets better. This animals that we have now, the plan is either sell it to people that then get them fat in feedlots or get them fat ourselves with feed and then sell it to the local market here. That is the butchers, that for them is already a big value, big change in value. That the animals come from that are born and raised here and are from these breeds here, is already apparently much better in flavor than more meat breeds. I heard that come more from France, that they can get much fatter, much faster. But apparently, this one has better flavor, they don't get as fat as fast. So that is the market we found so far for this year. Last year we were just selling all of them to people that would get them fat in feedlots.
SPEAKER_03:How does it make you feel when they go out?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I don't like it.
SPEAKER_03:That is not I'm not criticizing, I understand the reality.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I because I thought from the beginning we could do the grass thinish part, but the reality, so that was not anything.
SPEAKER_03:It was also three years of extreme drought, but yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, let's see if maybe for next spring we can identify a cow that doesn't that is more or less young and doesn't get pregnant, and then we can try with that one. So instead of a male trying a female and trying at the end of spring and see if there would that would be meat that would be possible to sell for the market.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, it's all figuring out with low input or no input what's the ideal recipe that works here and now, and of course it might change, it might shift, depending how yeah, how weather patterns shift as well, or how much water you can get back here, how much you can store in the dams and in the ponds.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, another option would be to buy a hundred female angus and start faster, but that'll be a half a million euro investment that I don't have. And I wouldn't dare to do it also, not with other someone else's money at this moment. I think it would be a bit too risky.
SPEAKER_03:And the risk is you try to move them, you have to get them young, but they're not used, and they're not gonna get happy when you move them 20, 30, 40 kilometers.
SPEAKER_00:Maybe we could also start, we didn't realize that just a bit with shorter trips. Maybe instead of in the first week moving them 10 or 15 kilometers to try to do one week a kilometer, another week two, another week three, something like that. But yeah, we were used to our cows that are really tough. Yeah, maybe you can already. I don't know if you can hear with the microphone that there's stones to where we're walking over.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, can it's uh it will be interesting to put even non-permanent fencing in here, like a stick doesn't go down very easily. No. And thus the no-fence piece. And yeah, so what excites you definitely the cows in terms of integrating them further into the farm, in terms of taking more arable out in terms of permanent pasture, what are interesting paths to complexify it even more or to bring more complexity to the land?
SPEAKER_00:With in with anything else, or you can do it.
SPEAKER_03:If you can dream 10 years down the line, what would you love to see?
SPEAKER_00:I think with the crops we have, with the other crops like the almonds, I wouldn't like to expand even more because we already have 700 hectares of almond trees. Pistachios, I would like to plant a few more because we do manage a few hundred, but we only own six hectares. You would like to plant a bit more.
SPEAKER_03:Because you're working with SLM partners, right?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. Shout out to Paul and Augusta and Exactly, and they have 100 hectares of pistachio trees, 100 hectares of almonds, and 25 hectares of olive trees. Do you sell for them as well, or do they sell by themselves? They so far they also because it was in transition to organic, and we have to sell it separately. So so far also it was to different clients. This year it is certified organic, and we'll see how we can do it.
SPEAKER_03:But you would like to get some more. You own yourself some more land on.
SPEAKER_00:Some more pistachious at least. So I'll basically the rest of the arable land we have that has still grains. I like to substitute grains completely. So this year we had the our historical record, which was 2,200 kilos per hectare, but we had a hail storm, so the insurance also paid us another 1,200 kilos because of the hail storm. So in total, we had let's say 3,400. The record was already 2,200, but if we would add even the part of the insurance, it's really a lot. But the price, I think, is 18 cents a kilo. So everybody really got 400 euros per hectare of income, and seeding the grains, fertilizing the grains, and buying the seeds because unfortunately we needed to buy the seeds the last three years because we couldn't harvest at all, not even for our own seeds, it's costing us 450 euros per hectare. So, yes, because of subsidies, we managed to break even and have a little profit, but having a little profit because of subsidies in the best year, in our best year of the best record is ridiculous. It's true that the prices before were more like 30 cents, and that was very different. But yeah, it's also not the best way of managing the soil, it's also not the best for biodiversity. So I prefer to change this a little bit into some more pistachos and also a little bit more vineyard because we have five hectares of vineyard that this year we had the first harvest and we are making our first wine. It's a small sample, we are only having 400 liters, so I think we'll drink it in the farm. Uh but in the next years, hopefully, we have more. So we would like to expand a bit more on the vineyard part because it grows really well, and I think there's a potential market with the yeah, the name we have.
SPEAKER_03:And the rest of the grain, grain is tricky to sell through crowd farming or something like that. Yeah, no, yeah, indeed, because it's uh direct-to-consumer grain, working your tongue now.
SPEAKER_00:It's impossible. And yeah, maybe I don't know, turn it into bread, but yeah, I don't like that too much. So change it into permanent pasture, trying to manage it the best way possible with the cows, so we keep improving the soil and improving the amount of cow days per year we can have per plot, and increasing a lot the cow park because I've seen also that we didn't have the problem of finding people to work in the farm until last year. So far, we could expand and hire new people to be a tractor driver and buy a new tractor, but this year already it's quite a challenge. Okay, and it took us four months to find a tractor driver. And actually, he's starting to do the exam to be a policeman. So I don't think if he won't stay, yeah, he will be a policeman. I'll be happy for him, but not for us. And we also had to renovate a tractor, and it cost us 190,000 euros class taxes.
SPEAKER_03:And then I thought about machines, machines.
SPEAKER_00:You could buy a lot of cows with that.
SPEAKER_03:And so even though you'd be the same uh cowboy. And so even though you haven't fully figured out the market yet, let's say, nor the quality piece and taste piece of the cows, you're already quite convinced that the cow piece just works much better.
SPEAKER_00:Even if we would get so now also the prices for we normally have as a reference the price for a calf when he's 200 kilos and about six months, and that is when most of the ranchers sell the calves. Oh, what a beautiful cow dung with a lot of green.
SPEAKER_03:I'm gonna take a picture and we're gonna put it otherwise. It's not visual.
SPEAKER_00:A lot of legumes.
SPEAKER_03:So we keep talking about it.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, so that is more or less the price of a calf like that. Just two, three years ago, it was about 550, 650 euros. Now is now it is not normal and it will not last long, I think. But now it's about 1400 euros.
SPEAKER_03:Any idea why? Like what are these swings of well?
SPEAKER_00:Apparently, there's an increasing demand of beef in North Africa because of the countries also not increasing their income, the people, and wanting more beef. And at the same time, there has been a decrease in production in Europe because of diseases, droughts, and also people retiring. So that was yeah, a mixed basically made it increase. Some people said that it will take one or two years more until the market that maybe with Medico Sud agreement bring in more animals from Argentina and Brazil, maybe that will also make it the prices not be that high for that long. But we made the calculations, and even at 600 euros a calf, it makes sense.
SPEAKER_02:Wow.
SPEAKER_00:And even if we just would have these calves and sell them to either a feedlot, preferably not, or a regenerative rancher that would finish them grass-fed in their farm, at 600 euros, it works. Now at 1400 euros, I wish I had a thousand cows. And also, yeah, with 100 cows, it's probably not enough. But if we keep increasing to 200 cows, 300, 400, it would be pretty good because the costs are besides the it's just the labor, the fence, the colors, and the maintenance of the colors per month that you pay around, I think it's four euros per cow per month, something like that. But that's pretty much the cost we have, and the grazing rice that are pretty cheap.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, so I think many people forget how interesting these economics can be in certain circumstances compared to arable, where you have big machines that always break. Yeah, and a lot of costs to go in, very risky outcome, could be nothing. Of course, it maybe some subsidies, some insurance, but and with the cows, like you said, you can graze it even if it's a filled crop. You can move them somewhere, you're much more flexible. Like I think Benedict was saying, when I have a tough squeeze, like in May or June, when cash flow is low, I can butcher a few and pay salaries. Yeah, because it's like a walking, walking bank account, basically. Not that I want to, but it gives me flexibility and it gives me optionality to choose.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. Yeah, that also another thing we were thinking is that now we are keeping all the females for ourselves. But we've seen already a lot of ranchers from not that close by that they really want to buy our females because they say if exactly they're really if they adapted here, they will thrive anywhere else. Maybe not in the very north, where it's that wet and yeah, but in all the south, definitely. So that can definitely be an interesting part that even if we have a very big herd, and at some point we can not only sell the calves, but we could sell some of the cows and do get some cash. And also, indeed, this very bad three years, it was good enough for them, but we did think like our grains, yeah. This is our farm, and we cannot move anywhere else. The trees are here, and if this drought continues, they might even dry up. But the cows, we could just rent grazing rides near Madrid in Salamanca or whatever, that it was a wonderful year, and we just moved them there, and it's not easy, but it is totally possible.
SPEAKER_03:Let's say moving almond trees is gonna be a bit more tricky. Yeah, fascinating.
SPEAKER_00:And is a if Ismael would retire, maybe I wouldn't be that optimistic.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, no, it's very it's still fragile, but in a way very promising, let's say. And how do you like when you do you often come here to let's say quote unquote hang out with the cows? Like, what's your relationship and your day-to-day relationship with them in the operation? Of course, with Ismail managing them and doing part of it with your phone. Yeah, how close are you?
SPEAKER_00:Well, with with Ismail, we talk every day with the phone. I check it a few times a day. Uh how addictive is it? No offense.
SPEAKER_03:How addictive is it?
SPEAKER_00:I think now, after a year and a half or using it, and maybe not as I'm not as addicted as but at the beginning, it was very much. For example, now I took out the alerts, so only it receives them. Otherwise, every time a cow would get out, or maybe a cover would fall down and not move, then you would get an alert, and he gets it.
SPEAKER_03:How long did it take you to switch of the alert? Maybe six months. Okay, okay, okay. Uh otherwise your regen focus turns into a phone addiction, which is not good.
SPEAKER_00:Exactly.
SPEAKER_03:They're very calm, huh?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:And inclusive horns.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, when they have cars, you need a very fast horse to get near them. We already got a few horses horned.
SPEAKER_03:Wow. Well, that's good with wolves around. So you come, you check in regularly. And then how is it the as Joao Salatin likes to say, the one bad day? How is it when they go for you? Are you very rational in that or very is it emotional? What's that?
SPEAKER_00:I think it was it's not as bad as I thought. The first time that it was with this bull, that yeah, I really liked him. Um he came here as a calf and he was very sweet, and he was, I think, the most beautiful bull I've seen ever. And when he was in the truck to go to the slaughterhouse, he looked quite calm. And then I had a friend that was a veterinary that was there because we wanted to get also the balls to get some semen to freeze it and all that. He said he still looked pretty calm when he was inside the slaughterhouse. That apparently people who are not vets are not allowed to get in. So that gave me quite a lot of peace about it, and I have the his skin, it's a carpet in the bedroom of my kids.
SPEAKER_03:Okay, and it's a beautiful carpet, but yeah, it was less emotional than I thought because I thought it was gonna be maybe a bit more like I don't know, moving or yeah, because they're not used, of course, in terms of never seen a truck in their lives, probably. If they were born here, and otherwise they've seen it many years ago. They've been moved by horses for all their lives, they've only been outside and they've seen a barn, and of course, slaughterhouse and trucks have smells to it, have stressor hormones around it, other cows that are probably sadly more aware of what's gonna happen, and so that influences also the quality in the meat, and of course, just from uh from that perspective.
SPEAKER_00:But last year that we sold calves to to people that had feedlots, also we sold it in really little groups. So one was six calves to this guy, then a month later, five calves to this other guy, three calves to these other, and it was also a bit of a it is a nice relationship also with meeting these guys. We also went to see the fruitlots and getting to know each other, and it was not as sad as I thought.
SPEAKER_03:Good because it's different than harvesting grain, obviously, and almonds. You could say plants have the frequencies and vibrations, but we're not so attuned to that yet. This is much more it feels more living.
SPEAKER_00:Well, for example, when we have to get them in that area to for example put the vaccine or to check the blood for a disease that we have to do that once a year, there's a lot more drama going on. So all the cows are fighting each other, then uh or they don't want to get in this place, or you have to change the color and they make a huge mess out of it. Um but no, when we've been loading them, it's true that we've been loading only cats. Yeah, maybe it's not as emotional and as that time that it was the bull. And this time that it was a cow, we moved her her with our own trailer. She was quite a chilled cow, also 17 years old. Got in the trailer stay there, but not I think I I do get very sad when they fight. And if they fight and it's just to change the color, I like ah come on, please. But yeah, if they would fight getting a track to then get a slaughter, I think that would be a lot more sad.
SPEAKER_03:That's the reality of the calmness. I've been you wouldn't know if we walked among 70 cows. No moon, no, they've been grazing, they've been sitting.
SPEAKER_00:Let's get closer to this one. These are from last year. They were born, so they are now I think 14 months, 15 months old.
SPEAKER_03:Even this one is laying here.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, so when I bought the males, sorry, the cows, the adults, that was about almost two years ago. They cost 1100 euros per cow, adult cows, and they were with them 20 calves. Nowadays, because we were moving this one separately, the little ones that were born last year. I was talking with Ismail and I said, Wow, what an amazing group of cows, how beautiful they will they will turn into really good mums, and they're probably worth a lot. And he said they offered him the other day, because of these ones, two thousand five hundred euros per little cow, and they're fourteen months old. Okay.
SPEAKER_03:Of the colors, but is that a threat here?
SPEAKER_00:With lamps, it was a thing. We used to have a thousand sheep, and yeah, stealing lamps it would happen normally, it was a small amount, like 10 or 5 or something. But one time to my aunt, they stole her 200 lamps, and that was serious.
SPEAKER_03:Wow, how do you do that? Yeah in an iron.
SPEAKER_00:Open the barn and big trailer. I think these ones that are always outside are not so easy to steal.
SPEAKER_03:Probably that's and they respond to you and Ismail, probably, and that's pretty much it.
SPEAKER_00:And also these ones born here and used to this life and to get in the area for the colors or to in the metal. I don't know how you call that. The manga, we call it here.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, the fenced area.
SPEAKER_00:The fence area when you have to do something to them. They're very chill about it. But the mothers that lived in a mountain like that when we looked there, that was 3,000 area fenced, yeah, they're like deers. Interesting.
SPEAKER_03:So also that the genetics is improving, the herd is improving.
SPEAKER_00:When the herd is most of them from the ones born here, it's gonna be a pleasure to work with them.
SPEAKER_03:The cow got up and walked away.
SPEAKER_00:But they bully the angus. So the two angus, the bigger one and the little one, they bully them because I think it's because they don't have horns. So even the big angus that when he arrived, he was like 800 kilos, and he was bullied by these little ones. And then these little ones get the nice grass, and the other ones are the angus is fighting. Wow.
SPEAKER_03:Don't joke with the mountain people and the mountain cows. Actually, I want to ask a final question. We always like to ask, and I haven't asked you actually, if what's your message to investors? You get a lot of visitors here on the farm, you'll get a big group next week to let's say more financial-minded people. If we would do this in Valencia or in Madrid in the financial capital, and there's a room of investors, and we have a chat on stage. What would be your main message or a seed you want to plant in people that are managing their own money or other people's money about the general work, not necessarily the cows, but it could be the cows. What's a message you want to give them if it was only one thing?
SPEAKER_00:That I think money to be more impactful and more regenerative, it needs to be a bit more patient. I think the more patient it is, the more impact and the more regenerative it is. And it it is already wonderful that there is money coming in for these type of things for four years or six or eight or ten. But in many areas, for many things, we see that it needs more, like 20 or more. And it can have a decent return, maybe not a spectacular, but it would enable a lot of these landscapes to really regenerate. But we with returns or exits in in six years or eight years or ten in an area like this, and especially in dryland, it is impossible. Which I think puts a lot of more pressure and attractiveness on irrigated areas, and then that can actually could turn out into a problem because then there's more money flowing in, more investment in that, and then more pressure in having more water, and more difficult to exit a lot of those farms that yeah, and a lot of those areas that we would need to reduce the amount of irrigation and the amount of water, because otherwise the aquifers are already dry or suffering a lot. On in our case here in the valley of the river Kippar that starts in this farm, out of 30 kilometers of river, there is already 28 kilometers dry, and that is because of a lot of intensive crops, especially lettuce and broccoli, that want would need a quick return. And I guess that happens also because of a lot of investments that are going through that, and then it's difficult to know to stop that flow. But I think if we could make this other part also attractive and start having more of a flow of investment, it would take out pressure over the irrigation area. And I know it's very difficult, and I understand it is a challenge for investments to go into that long periods. I think in our case we are a little bit more used to it because we are here and that's how it is. But yeah, if there's many other options, then I imagine it's very difficult to choose the option that is the longest term and lower return.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, or I think there's a risk-adjusted piece that we always forget when we talk about returns, because those quick six years or whatever return profile is also at risk of massive drought or at risk of nothing. Basically, here you have the land, which is the underlying asset, it's slowly regenerating. So there is a different, and we know some of the ecosystem services kick in after X years. Like soil takes a while, especially in at large scale, to and you need enough animals to hurt, you need enough compost, you need enough to really make like concentrated impact compared to so we haven't seen many long-term vehicles yet. I know some people you're working with, some people that are working on that. So I hope to be able to feature many more of those and have a 20-year planning. Because if most of the interesting returns and and growth is happening in year 12, why would you exit in 10 or 8? Like you're gonna give those returns to somebody else. And we need to treat this much more as infrastructure and long-term, like building a tall highway or something like there, we're used to thinking long-term. Nobody thinks people thinking 99-year leases, etc. And somehow we got it sucked into this two-year, five-year, ten-year software return nonsense. And and that's yeah, it's a no, it's not a disease, but it's definitely something we need to in inoculate. And what would you do if you would be responsible for a lot of money? Let's say we usually ask a billion dollar or billion euro question if you had to put that to work. Could be extremely long term, could be 40 years, 50 years, 100 years, seven generations, doesn't matter. What would you focus on? What would be your top priorities to tackle first? I'm not looking for investment advice, we're not giving investment advice, and I'm not looking for exact amounts, but what would be important buckets you would put pieces of that to work for probably diversified?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. I think because I don't know if you asked that question to Yannick or you wanted to ask it, was it two years ago or three?
SPEAKER_03:It was in 23 in February.
SPEAKER_00:And then I remember that Yannick and I talked about that question, and that is when we came out with well, if there would be one billion that we never thought about a number like that, then it would be possible to uh focus on something like a whole river, a whole watershed and the whole river, and fixing the river and all of that. And then we came out with a number, it was not a billion at that time, but it was close to a billion. And yeah, investing in basically what I would do is everything we're doing in La Junquera, but in a much bigger scale, but exactly the diversification of crops, all these techniques, all these sponsors, integrating the animals, processing with uh distillery or cracking and making a brand and selling all of that. I think I would do exactly the same, but then a hundred times more or a thousand times more.
SPEAKER_03:Would you be strategic? Like in we talk a lot about now in the podcast on water cycle restoration and the watershed. Would you be strategic on figuring out okay where to regen? Because even a billion goes only so far, like where you would intervene or where you would place your bets.
SPEAKER_00:Well, I think if it would be a billion for 30,000 hectares, it would work. But again, if it would be for more, because I think that has happened to us a lot, like we we have an objective or a dream, and maybe many times it has happened before we thought, okay, now we have to make a make that bigger, make that dream bigger. But definitely I would start always in the book of the art of war to go to the easiest one. No, you go always with your most powerful unit to the weakest one, so you have a big effect, and and then it's much easier to win that war. In a way, I think I would focus it almost a bit as if it would be a war to the water.
SPEAKER_03:And where would the soft spot be here? What would be the or here, let's say, what would be the soft spot to start?
SPEAKER_00:Here would be if we could, for example, buy out the farms that are growing these intensive crops, that would be we would immediately have water in the river. Because as soon as they came here nine years ago, a few months later, and then a year later, first it dried out in the summer and then in the winter, and then it never came out again. So I would start with that. We are already doing a lot of other things with much smaller amounts and collaborating now with six farms in the valley, and I think it's going super, it's very interesting, it's going really well, and they're doing a lot of uh actions. And one just finished building 30 ponds and it rained on Friday, and already you saw the we saw the effect in a lot of them. But yeah, I think that would be the beginning. That's those lettuce farms, and then go taking away the pressure, yeah, go with others.
SPEAKER_03:Because then it just means so much more water in the valley with very little no, not little effect. No, not little effect, let a little need to buy at those farms to stop the lettuce growing. But there's not a huge amount of other things to bring back. The water will be there because the water is there, which is being absorbed all by broccoli and lettuce. And then as a final one, a final question. There's so many dung beetles around, by the way. They all look so so active all the time, looking for I don't know where the next dung is for you. That's gonna be that's gonna be a bit of they do significant walk as well, actually.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:And it's a sign, right? As how quickly dung beetles show up when dung is dropped of a healthy or a regenerating pasture or regenerating field.
SPEAKER_00:And they have to be like the cows walking long distances to get their food.
SPEAKER_03:Are they flying or they don't fly, right?
SPEAKER_00:I don't think so. No. They walk.
SPEAKER_03:As a final question, I can see four or five actually moving. If you had a magic wand and you could change one thing overnight, what would that be? Could be close to tap of the irrigation guys. My mind went there. I don't know why.
SPEAKER_00:Woof. I could change one thing.
SPEAKER_03:But only one. But only one. Could be we've heard from subsidies to all animals outside to the like global consciousness, like really as broad and as grounded as you.
SPEAKER_00:I think one would be for all of these, for this province to to be able to have permanent pasture grassland, that you don't lose the capacity of making it into arable land again, but also that they don't make you till it every five years, which is the case in many other places, and make that an option, and an option that then you don't lose the cap subsidy, so you have a minimum amount. Um that would allow a lot of land that are growing grains that don't make any sense because we got those 2,200 kilos. But I know the average of these two farms near us was 500 kilos per hectare this year, plus no harvest the last three. So why would you keep turning the soil around for nothing? That would have a very big impact, I think, in soil biodiversity, and also then those farms. If it doesn't rain, then you at least can keep that subsidy, but you have no cost. And if it does rain, then you can put cows and then get some meat out of it and then make another hundred euros or something, and then that would change a lot, all of this, I think.
SPEAKER_03:Perfect. I think it's a good moment to wrap up and to thank you so much for this lovely walk and talk. Next time we'll be a ride and walk, I will a ride and talk, sorry, and into a deep dive in what reintroducing, and you might hear this on the you may maybe not, there's a cow urinate reurinating, adding a bit of water to a dry place, what the reintroduction of ruminants means in a dry landscape, and how much it makes sense. And of course, what enabling technology can do when it's when AgTech is done well, it makes stuff possible that it wasn't before. So thank you so much for this great chat and a great walk.
SPEAKER_00:Well, thank you, Kuri. It was a big pleasure for me as well. And yeah, it was very nice to see them this calm, also for with us walking around them. And uh yeah, because many times I come alone and then they are calm, but or when we come with a horse, then they are not calm. But now that we are two people and walk talking amongst them, then it was nice. And thanks a lot also for making it possible and being part of the group that loaned the money to be possible to get the colors because yeah, it has been really a game changer and it has unlocked a world of possibilities in this area.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, it's such so fun to be part of that. And kudos to some other people, Bari, Corinne, Tommy, Gaddi that put together the bigger part of the loan. We are a small part of it, but also about restructuring it and the speed, I think, was essential because you had to get them, and otherwise you had to fence somewhere and it was extremely expensive. Thank you again so much, and for a great walk and talk. So, what? You've listened to this whole walking the land episode, you've heard how seeing the cows, meeting the cows, heard about the story, how Alfonso got into this, and now what? How do we enable more farmers to do so? It's interesting, I think, for me is that he got the idea of the virtual shepherd, virtual fencing from a neighbor. So it's starting to spread, but still way, way too slow. I'm recording this in a landscape that could absolutely use targeted grazing, and yet virtual colours and virtual, no real callers and virtual fencing and virtual shepherds haven't arrived yet. So I'm really curious also what you think. Is this something that in five or ten years is going to be everywhere? Ubiquitous, just like cell phones did and smartphones, or is this gonna remain a niche? Um, and um a really big question, and I think this is one of the big examples, is what other enabling tech is out there? What other technology things, technology tools can enable farmers to hold more complexity, as we absolutely, desperately, direct need that. And I do think there's the boom of deep tech, the boom of AI, automation, robotics, with all its risks and issues, etc., is also very interesting for agriculture and landscape regeneration because we need a lot of hands, and we need a lot of strong hands, and we need a lot of hands that do a lot of repetitive tasks actually, and physical tasks. And I don't know if we have those hands, and I don't know if we're gonna find those and we're gonna be able to pay for those and all of those things because yeah, also the even the job or the of a shepherd is slowly dying out. Like the fact that the sheep disappear in the landscape of Alfonso and Unique is because of no shepherds and very little holistic management, of course, but there's also a huge human and social peace. And so the landscapes are dying and are yeah, refrained of life, which is a huge issue, fire issue, water issue, and all of those. So I'm really curious what we're gonna see over the next years. Will this spread quote unquote wildfire or or not? Thank you for listening all the way to the end. For show notes and links discussed, check out our website, investinginregenerativeagriculture.com slash posts. If you like this episode, why not share it with a friend? And get in touch with us on social media, our website, or via the Spotify app and tell us what you like most. And give us a rating on Apple Podcasts or Spotify or your podcast player. That really, really helps us. Thanks again and see you next time.
