‘Que viene el lobo’, the podcast that warns of the need for generational change in our fields

Where do you see yourself in five years? This is often a frequently asked question in job interviews. Undoubtedly, no one is sure of knowing where and how we will be, especially today, an uncertain time haunted by pandemics and wars and crossed by the climate crisis. We do know, however, that by 2027 60% of rural workers – farmers, shepherds and livestock breeders – will retire. And many will do so without a replacement. These are data that concern the sector and that, without a doubt, should set off the alarms of society as a whole. If there is no one to work in agriculture, livestock or fishing, how will we have access to food?

Listen Que viene el lobo

Currently, three out of five farmers are over 55 years old, which means that in five years 60 out of every 100 will leave their crops and animals. Some will do so at the mercy of a stranger, others will see their businesses close quietly. Generational change, precisely, is the topic addressed by Nuria Pérez in What the wolf is coming, a podcast linked to the #ReGeneraciónRural campaign launched in January 2022 in collaboration with CERAI following the publication of the report “The road to agricultural employment in Territorialised Food Systems“.

For this project, which is part of the annual strategy for Awareness of decision-makers of the Sustainable Food line of the Daniel and Nina Carasso Foundation, Pérez has interviewed dozens of shepherds, farmers and ranchers. “What does it mean to lose almost half of the national productions? It will make us depend on large companies that will bring the products from abroad and can charge us for them whatever they want,” he reflects in the first minutes.

To this is added another worrying fact: there are not enough young people to take charge of the field and with the desire to renew cultivation techniques and those who have launched themselves into the agricultural sector manifest, as we could hear in unoconcinco, a low profitability of the project as well as a difficult access to land. But, of course, it is not all bad news: there are alternatives and young people who are looking for their professional careers in agriculture and livestock.

Nuria Pérez has worked as a creative director and has published several books such as El monstruo del monóculo and has recorded another podcast entitled Gabinete de curiosidades. In this Que viene el lobo wants to draw attention to what is happening in our fields. During the three-quarters of an hour that this podcast lasts, Nuria Pérez includes the voices of different professionals who are dedicated to livestock, agriculture and even textile art.

One of them is Mariana, a Portuguese veterinarian who works as an extensive livestock farmer in Mozota, a town 30 kilometres from Zaragoza. One of the challenges she had to face was the “masculinization of the sector,” which entails “some dynamics that expel women.”

And he points out a fact that sheds light on the difficulty of starting a career in the field: to begin with, around 600 or 700 sheep are needed, at 150 euros each. To which is added the rent of land, a car, a tractor and a bureaucracy whose paperwork is increasingly complex. All these processes complicate access to the countryside and lead to a “detachment from the rural world”, says Nuria Pérez.

However, at a time when family farms are shrinking and traditional models are becoming economic farms, there is a model that manages to coexist with macro-farms. It is that of Vorasenda, an agricultural company founded by Xabi, a young man who decided to look to agroecology for his future. “We need young people in the countryside. I wanted a way of life in which to eliminate preconceived structures,” he says.

He began his model in the lands of Carpesa, where he realised that “a social model could be woven from food and territory”. Xabi decided to weave a direct relationship with the consumer and for this he chose not to sell online and make the consumer come to the point of production. This model has 160 members and for its founder it has been a challenge: “you have to do good agriculture although at the beginning things die and you lose money”.

In the words of Nuria Pérez, “the disconnection between cities and the rural world is growing every day. We like the countryside but if it suits our life, zip lines are better than fruit fields”. But there is another way to approach the natural world and that is what the artist Aitor Saraiba has done, who decided to leave Madrid for a small town in Cantabria, where he currently lives and works.

The artist immersed himself in the world of textile art through a school in Barcelona, where he learned to use looms. Then he began to connect with the shepherds, with the natural world and understood that “we have to be aware of the origin of food because it is the way to buy and consume in a different way.” And he adds a reflection: “We tend to approach the problem from the environmental or consumption point of view but the basis is social, the sustainability that should concern us is the social one. Before changing the shopping basket, you have to change the relationship with those who produce it.”

In short, Que viene el lobo warns us of the need to change the food model and the need for a generational change in our lands. “We need the enthusiasm of young people, their freshness and their new ideas. If not, the problems are parked, the models do not adapt to the new times and the practices become obsolete.”