OneWithFive: Other Feeding Is Possible

On June 27, we held the second edition of unoconcinco, meetings on sustainable food in Spain, an initiative that we have promoted from the Daniel and Nina Carasso Foundation. This year, the event, which took place at the Francisco Giner de los Ríos Foundation, was attended by more than 200 people including attendees, agents from the agri-food sector and the media.

To inaugurate this second edition, Lucía Casani, director for Spain of the Foundation, shared with the attendees the concept of sustainable food that we handle at the Foundation. “We understand that food is not only food, it is also a source of well-being, health and a fundamental right,” he remarked in the inaugural speech. “Food production also influences problems such as social inequality or greenhouse gas emissions that affect climate change,” he said, referring at this point to the link between food and climate change to which the meetings allude from the very name: the need to limit the increase in the average global temperature to 1.5 degrees.

Diego García-Vega, a member of the Foundation’s board of trustees and master of ceremonies of this second edition, also warned about the consequences of climate change on agri-food production. “For some years now we have been witnessing torrential rains, the erosion of fertile soils that stagnate the land and the loss of biodiversity in our territory,” he said, although “we take it for granted that we will have food on our plates every day, this situation is increasingly vulnerable.”

During the day, more than 40 experts from the food sector took the floor to reflect on key elements for the change towards sustainable food such as the agroecological and fair transition, generational renewal or the functioning of the food chain. At the same time, the main instruments needed to carry out this transition were also discussed: public policies, innovation, investment and communication.

How to promote sustainable practices in the agri-food sector

In the transition to a sustainable food system, all links in the chain play an essential role: from production to consumption. In this context, one of the topics addressed during the second edition of unoconcinco was how to promote more sustainable practices that allow feeding the current population without jeopardizing the right to food of future generations.

Under the title of Agroecological and just transition: the path to sustainable food, the farmer Marcos Garcés and the environmentalist and executive director of the Spanish Ornithological Society – SEO/BirdLife, tried to answer questions such as how to address environmental sustainability and ensure the economic viability of productions. During this table moderated by Diego García-Vega, Marcos Garcés insisted on the need for training for farmers, a fluid dialogue with the sector and continuous accompaniment. In the case of their exploitation, two thirds are organic. “My father started 20 years ago and we have given ourselves many blows, the land is revealed and economically it is difficult to make the change,” he said. For this reason, he insisted that “we must accompany economically, with continuous training and with clear explanations because there are some measures that make sense but are imposed and are not understood”.

In the same vein, Asunción Ruiz intervened, commenting that “policies must have the flexibility and impact necessary to be fair, but sometimes they are perverse and invite discussion instead of conversation. In this context, the countryside feels that these are measures that are imposed on them.” In short, for the transition to be fair it is necessary to “be close to the countryside and get to know it better”.

In addition, the countryside has a problem that has been visible for years and that is increasingly alarming: it is being left alone. “We need a living countryside, dignity for farmers and healthy products for the consumer,” concluded Asunción Ruiz. In this sense, Marcos Garcés stressed the need to make agricultural policy: “as a society we have to choose the type of agriculture we want: one with farmers or one with companies that do business and investment. Once the decision has been made, policies must be oriented in that direction.”

The rural environment, its viability and generational renewal

After the start of the day, the first three parallel sessions took place. In Much more than food: the primary sector as a driver for the regeneration of the rural world and territorial cohesion, five experts discussed food production but also the need for the revitalization of the rural world, which is currently facing an important demographic challenge, generational renewal and the need to build a living rural world.

With the participation of Patricia Martínez, deputy deputy director of Rural Environment Dynamization in the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food; Juan Mari Totorika, Agricultural Technical Engineer who works at the Urkiola Rural Development Association; Piero Carucci, head of the area of local dynamization and education of the Center for Rural Studies and International Agriculture; Victoria de la Mora, de Ashoka; and Xosé Antón Araúxo, president of the Montes de Couso Community, the meeting made it clear that one of the biggest problems in the rural world, and which was already discussed in the first edition of unoconcinco, is the ageing of rural workers.

Only 8.8% of farm owners are under 41 and, at the other extreme, we find 40% who are over 65. With these data, in the coming years 50% of workers will have retired. “So far we have thought about who is going to join but we also have to look at those who are leaving. The lack of relief is a failure of the system,” said Neus Monllor, coordinator of the Network of Agricultural Test Spaces (RETA) and moderator of the conversation.

To respond to this important demographic challenge, Patricia Martínez highlighted the need for “access to land, financing, training and decent living conditions in rural areas”. Aware of the need for training before, during and after starting a future job in the field, in 2020 the ministry launched Cultiva, a training project among farmers that offers a stay of 5 to 14 days on a farm. This initiative has more and more lines of subsidies and “among the possible evolutions of the project is to study the feasibility of transferring farms between farmers who leave and young people who want to enter”.

For Juan Mari Totorika, one of the problems is that the younger generations have not tried to follow in the footsteps of family farms. “The farmer is asked more and more, he is required to produce a lot and cheaply and they have to earn money to survive. The requirements to enter the market make it unprofitable.”

There are many entities and institutions that are dedicated to supporting social entrepreneurs. One of them is Ashoka, through which Victoria de la Mora identifies opportunities that add value to them and connects them with innovators, mentors and experts from Ashoka’s global network. Among its projects is Ashoka Learning Ecosystem (ALE), an “ecosystem that seeks to democratise access to knowledge with a series of training routes and talks on good practices aimed at entrepreneurs to facilitate access to the rural world”.

Along the same lines, the Foundation promotes, in collaboration with CERAI, Ruralitud, a website that seeks to “generate positive narratives so that people see the attractiveness of the countryside and primary production,” said Piero Carucci. It details a series of tips to undertake different stages. This project arises from a problem that is becoming more and more visible: the closure of companies. “Many are scarcely viable, they are small companies built with a lot of work and little money that work with small margins, which does not allow them to have the capacity to react to a meteorological problem, market or rise in the prices of inputs.”

Very aware of their environment and with the intention of fixing people to the territory, Xose Antón Arauxo, from the Community of Montes de Couso, explained how they defend and value the territory. “We work with products with which you can live with dignity. We have eucalyptus and pine trees but it is not enough for people to settle down because the yield of eucalyptus is 1.14 euros per ton every 20 years.”

In parallel, two more tables followed: How to promote the transition in the primary sector? Dialogue on possible policies, in which the new tool promoted by the Daniel and Nina Carasso Foundation, the Green Books, was presented, which seek political advocacy from practice and the knowledge of agents, through roadmaps that favour the food transition at different levels: Agricultural Systems, Fisheries Systems, Value Chains and Right to Food. The second was entitled Collective innovation to address the challenges of the food system, in which the complexity of the challenges facing the sector was addressed. In addition, different collective initiatives that from various approaches are contributing to the transformation of the food system were known.

After this first block of the day, the day had a break to taste the food prepared by the Chef 2030 network, made up of chefs from communities that promote sustainable menus made with fresh and seasonal food in schools, hospitals and residences, will be in charge of preparing the day’s food.

After lunch, the conversation sessions resumed in the different rooms of the Francisco Giner de los Ríos Foundation. Shared value chains: foundations for the construction of a fair and resilient food system, which discussed the keys to promoting interaction and collaboration between them in favor of food sustainability; Impact Investment and Social Entrepreneurship in Sustainable Food, which revolved around how to innovate and adapt financial tools to the principles of the social economy; and Plant, Eat, Count: How to Bring Sustainable Food to New Audiences, where questions were raised about what formats the most successful communicators use to capture the attention of their audiences. if scientific rigor is at odds with amenity or if sustainable food can compete with the avalanche of viral content that floods the networks.

A closure with an eye on the future

Diego García-Vega closed the meetings with a couple of reflections extracted from the intense day. On the one hand, the presentations of the 40 experts made it clear that “the urgency is increasing, that the model is failing us all”. However, the positive side of the situation is the “growing interest in a new paradigm of doing things differently and the certainty that it is possible for it to be so”.

The second edition of unoconcinco ended with the presentation of the awards of the second edition of the Daniel Carasso Fellowship to Marta Albo Puigserver, Ujué Fresán Salvo and Adrián González Guzmán for their research projects in sustainable food by the president of the Foundation, Marina Nahmias. “With the Fellowship we want to support the careers of young researchers to build a more sustainable future for the planet and for society. It is a pride that this scientific recognition bears my father’s name because it symbolizes the values on which he built his life,” concluded Marina Nahmias before giving way to the closing of the meetings with the musical proposal of the band Potaje Lab.