The southeast corner of the Peninsula is one of the areas most affected by desertification.
The interior triangle between Almería, Murcia and Granada is suffering the most extreme drought and intensive greenhouse agriculture has impoverished its soils, according to scientists, turning almost a third of the total territory of the first two provinces arid.
Almost a decade ago, a group of activists allied themselves with farmers to try to stop degradation.
EL PAÍS visited this dry plateau in 2019 and has now returned to see how this initiative has evolved.
It all started in 2014, when the Dutch NGO Commonland was looking for an area to launch an ecological restoration project.
A local association from Almería, Alvelal, managed to ensure that the 400,000 euros a year coming from outside were invested here, with a horizon of two decades to turn around the landscape.
A decade later, the 30 farmers involved in the task have multiplied by 10 to reach 359. A very significant advance, since the project not only seeks ecological transformation, but also economic transformation, in order to avoid the diaspora.
The war against desertification is very unequal: during the last decade, Almería and Murcia added 6,008 square kilometers of arid soils that were previously semi-arid, according to calculations by the Experimental Station for Arid Zones of the Higher Council for Scientific Research (CSIC), with headquarters in the easternmost Andalusian province.
Meanwhile, Alvelal has replanted 240,000 trees and bushes to regenerate 2.6 square kilometers in public farms and forests, and its 359 farmers total 192 square kilometers of agricultural area that now respects natural vegetation to enrich the soils, when previously that land was plowed and became poorer.
Despite the disparity in numbers and the imbalance of forces, the locals know that there is no other choice but to fight.
From the car, the landscape does not seem overly wild, with green spots on the horizon, full of low mountain ranges and fields with pistachio, walnut and almond trees, some with the flower already sprouted and a lush white.
But when you step on it, the stony and dry soil reveals its lack of nutrients and little richness.
Since September, not a drop has fallen until a few days ago, with 19 liters per square meter.
Most of the cereal crops disappeared because even though they were rainfed, they could not last so many months without water and perished.
On farms it is normal to see steppe rollers (
Salsola kali
), the typical vegetable balls that roll with the wind in the far West.
On a hill next to the La Junquera farm, in the western end of the province of Murcia, on stony soil there are planted small specimens of trees such as Moorish junipers, holm oaks and Aleppo pines, but also shrubs such as junipers and brooms that do not exceed a quarter height.
There is no visual impact nor will there be one in five years, the growth is phlegmatic.
Furthermore, only one in every two planted will survive, since the survival rate is 54% with the scarcity of rain becoming more and more pressing.
“We are working very far into the future to create an ecological corridor from the northwest of Murcia to the Guadix region, but we are not doing reforestation, but rather revegetation, not to generate forests, but ecosystems,” explains Fernando Bautista, head of natural areas at Alvelal.
The objective is to ensure that diverse life sprouts in this harsh corner and avoid the uniform forests of a single species planted in the past and that are easily consumed by flames.
In addition, they collect water to take advantage of the torrential rains, which destroy land that is lost on the way to the sea.
“The hardest thing on the field?
Look at the sky.
A year's salary depends on the drought and frost, hence the insecurity and reluctance of farmers to make changes to take care of the vegetation cover."
Remedios Arrés, farmer, president of the Alvelal association and one of the leaders of this war against the elements, knows that in her area it rains less and more torrentially—about 310 liters per square meter on average per year.
To stop the growing desertification and ensure that the soil does not die, it is necessary that the plowing of the fields decreases, the vegetation regrowth, the firewood is chopped to spread it and not burned, and that the mountains return to the forests of yesteryear.
It is already common for 200 liters to fall in this territory in five days and the soil is unable to absorb them.
Remedios Arrés, president of the Alvelal Association.
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After this decade of experience, scientists from the University of Almería who study the soils of the Altiplano have verified two pieces of evidence: the first is that the average percentage of organic matter in these lands is 1.27%, but in some regenerative crops, like that of farmer Manuel Martínez in Chirivel (Almería), it almost doubles to 2.3%.
With 250 hectares of vineyards, cereals, almond trees and regenerative forests, Martínez confirms the effects of the data: “I had not seen worms in my life and now you dig and there are.”
And the second is the confirmation that regenerative almonds have higher nutritional quality than organic and normal almonds, with more nutrients, protein, fats and bioactive compounds, as demonstrated by a study by the University of Valencia.
This territory is home to the largest area of organic almonds in the world, with 70,500 hectares.
“It is about adapting the techniques of the past, because before tractors, terraces were already made, which are very old, or the irrigation ditches that the Arabs made.
It takes effort to change, but even the most skeptical farmers have adopted these practices.
The efforts of these 500 farmers are droplets of water in the sea, but it starts somewhere,” says Miguel Ángel Gómez, technical director of Alvelal and agronomy researcher at the University of Almería.
Manuel Martínez Egea, owner of the Puerto Viejo farm, in the Almeria town of Chirivel. PACO PUENTES
The Administrations give facilities to Alvelal, but they limit themselves to taking care of the public forests, without getting involved in revegetation.
“At the moment we are the only ones restoring.
The European law [the recent Nature Restoration standard] has come out and there is greater sensitivity, but no Administration finances it, neither the State nor the autonomous communities,” Bautista confirms.
The five regions of the territory have 79 City Councils with 200,000 inhabitants and so far 23 mayors have signed the Manifesto for a co-generative territory to reduce depopulation, expand regenerative crops and give a greater economic margin to farmers, a priori common sense factors for the benefit of their neighbors.
Alvelal wants to involve the fifty councilors pending to join the initiative and open their eyes so that before 2026 everyone is on board, as well as getting the Andalusian Government, the Government of Murcia and the Ministry for the Ecological Transition involved.
Elvira Marín directed Alvelal and now chairs the Aland Foundation to export to the rest of the country the model of the four returns that the Dutch implemented in the Altiplano.
“We want to influence public policies because the current model clearly does not work.
We suffer desertification, but also depopulation and lack of opportunities.
The socioeconomic and environmental perspectives are horrendous, but by involving businessmen and citizens the process can be reversed, we must give self-esteem to the region,” she encourages.
An example is La Almendrehesa, a company that pays between 7.3 and 7.5 euros per kilo of almonds in regenerative cultivation to 50 farmers, 5% higher than the average price of organic almond markets.
From the side of the Administration, Jaime de Lara, director of the Sierra María Los Vélez Natural Park (Almería), is an exception: “Alvelal's restoration plans in six mountains are the best thing that has happened to me in my life.
They took care of everything, I just opened the park doors for them and saved me the project, the bidding and the bureaucratic certifications,” he confesses.
Regarding the future, he is optimistic: “I am certain that erosion will be corrected with repopulation and hydrological restoration.
The change for the farmer is not more expensive, but he does have to change the chip and forget about plowing to incorporate the waste into the soil."
The mayor of Chirivel, José Torregrosa (PSOE), adds: “This change is not easy.
Our elders were tied to machinery and making an investment is difficult.
We are in a rabid dryland and we have had two very bad years.”
A flock of sheep on the El Entredicho regenerative farm.
PACO PUENTES
Where the provinces of Murcia, Albacete and Almería meet is the El Entredicho farm, a family farm of cereal, almond, pistachio, walnut trees and 700 sheep, where its owners build gabions to break the inertia of the water, which rushes down the slope at full speed. from the nearby Sierra Revolcadores.
“I trust that regenerative crops will be differentiated with an organic seal, but money was not the reason to get involved in Alvelal,” says Rafael Ordinas, who produced 40,000 kilos of almonds last year.
“The so-called weeds are not so bad.
We only touch the organic structure of the land a couple of times a year and we till near the trees, not in the center of the streets to avoid erosion,” he explains.
The Ministry of Agriculture views regenerative agriculture favorably, but does not consider promoting a seal that differentiates it from organic farming and passes the ball to the European Commission.
Next May, representatives of seven associations from the Peninsula (Alentejo, Menorca, Cádiz, the Altiplano, Girona, Campos de Montiel and the Ebro) will meet in Girona to consolidate a national network of regenerative spaces and join forces.
“We want to turn the Iberian Peninsula into the leading regenerative territory in Europe in the restoration of landscapes with business development and a holistic vision,” advances Willem Ferwerda, founder of Commonland, which contributes 400,000 euros of the annual budget of 1.6 million Alvelal and invests in environmental projects in 20 countries.