Amid the whitewashed pueblos blancos villages and rugged natural environment of the Sierra de Cádiz sits Manuel Troya’s farm. With the coast of Africa to the south, vast mountains all around, and unusually high rainfall, it’s a unique corner of Spain.
He’s finished a day of seeing to his cows and installing some water pipes. It’s peak summertime and you would expect the grass to be awash with a beige and brown colour palette, but that’s not the case here. His 475-hectare farm is booming with biological diversity and green forage. According to Manuel, this is a direct result of soil rest and animal impact, or as it’s technically called, holistic management.
The context of Pajaretillo
Pajaretillo has been in Manuel’s family since the 60s. At the foot of the Sierra de Cádiz, it’s in one of the most prestigious livestock regions in Spain. He took it over in 2015. “When I arrived, I had no clue how to manage the land. I was an engineer and didn’t really anticipate that I’d take it over”.
Manuel could see that they were overgrazing in some areas and undergrazing in others. “Both lead to desertification. And with a brittle climate like this, you can easily destroy your land”. He knew that something wasn’t quite right, but he couldn’t find the words for what he was seeing. So he continued doing what his family had done for 60 years. He tilled the land, he used fertilisers and herbicides, he sowed, he harvested, and he started the cycle again.
But when he started gathering data on the business, he could see they were burning a lot of money. “There were so many outgoing costs, it felt like we were just shifting money from one pocket to the other”. He grew sceptical, but it wasn’t until he was introduced to the concept of holistic management at a conference that things changed.
“It put words to things I was seeing on the farm: that we had bad run-off because we tilled so heavily over the years, we were retaining less water because we had poor porosity, and that by damaging our land, we were damaging our future economy.”
Manuel started seeing things differently from that moment. He realised that there was an alternative way to farm, and with a small investment, he could turn things around. “It was like a lightbulb switched on in my head”.
On the transition
After learning of the concept, Manuel decided he would start implementing regenerative farming techniques in 2018. He attended events to learn from others, but “there’s no cookie-cutter approach for this way of farming”, he states.
He lacked the infrastructure to move water around the farm as his herd and soil needed. Every paddock needs enough forage, a lot of fresh water, and shade to protect the animals in the harsher months.
“It’s like a puzzle – you need to figure out the best way to do it”.
This, for Manuel, was one of his biggest challenges. When he started designing the water system, he would construct the pipes in a straight line rather than following the natural patterns of the landscape. “We ended up having overpressure in some areas so we couldn’t pump the water up the hills”.
He sought advice from others and drew on permaculture techniques to design the system more efficiently. “You should make the gravity work for you, not against you”, he says. A few years on, he now has 8 water tanks and 5 kilometres of water pipes running through his farm. “If you told me in 2018 this is where I’d be in five years I wouldn’t have believed you”.
Holistic livestock management
Holistic management, according to Manuel, is about mimicking the natural movement of animals in the wild. Using electric fencing and a grazing calendar, he moves his herd around the farm, providing high-impact in small paddocks, then leaving the soil to rest for months with no intervention. “With animal impact and long resting periods, you power up the soil – it’s like an explosion of life”.
In the past, Manuel’s grassland paddocks were around 1 hectare. They’re now 6000 metres with one or two changes per day. “We’re using around 90% of our forage doing this – what the cow isn’t eating, the soil is eating”. Even the thistles, which aren’t the cows’ favourite forage, are cleared.
After some years of success and some blessings on the weather front, he reached a point where he felt they could stop grazing one-third of the farm to grow perennials. “It’s saving 100 hectares of forage, and it’s this super high-quality cover that you’re buried in. It’s amazing”.
From hearing the birds chirping to seeing wildlife return, he’s come to appreciate watching his farm bounce back to life.
Manuel believes these changes come down to positioning yourself as a collaborator rather than a manager. It’s about observing how the land reacts and working with that response. “I’d love to say it was because I’m a genius, but it’s not. It’s an observation game and knowing when to take a step back”.
Fuss-free direct marketing
There are countless benefits associated with this way of farming. But Manuel set his eyes on one in particular: Getting higher margins for his produce through direct to consumer marketing. He states: “It’s very important for me. If you do things well on your farm, you should be able to ask for its true value”. Slowly but surely, he started testing the waters to see if there was demand.
You wouldn’t be alone in thinking that you’d need some marketing savvy skills and a fancy website. But that’s far from the case here. Manuel keeps things simple with a WhatsApp group and a fixed monthly sell to members.
“We get higher margins for the product. But we’re also keeping animals longer at the farm, so they’re bigger when we go to production”. In the end, they’ve got a higher price tag and a larger quantity to sell.
Outcomes, from the field
To track progress on his land, Manuel is running tests twice a year: once after the rainy season and again after the dry period. He’s recording key parameters that improve the function of his soil, it’s nutrients, and it’s water holding capacity. From these tests, he’s discovered that his soil organic matter has increased to 2%. He’s also naturally restored the soils nitrogen levels to 20% without a single drop of NPK. Another important parametre is soil porosity, a key function for water infiltration, which has improved dramatically.
But have these results translated to his wallet? When discussing profitability, Manuel states it’s all about your bottom-line. Yield has been king for years, but it’s not the metric to rule them all. “You might not have the same yield for the first few years, but you’re dramatically reducing your expenses and input costs. So, at the end of the day, you’ve got more money in your pocket”.
When he farmed conventionally, someone was on a tractor for six months of the year. Just in diesel consumption he’s reduced his expenses from 6.000€ in 2022 to 1.500€ in 2023 – a staggering 75%. It’s not just diesel either. He’s saving almost entirely on fertiliser, herbicide and feed costs. “I’m investing a fraction of what I was spending 6 years ago”, he says.
Putting a price on farm health
As we end our discussion, I’m curious to know how these benefits weigh up and what other farmers stand to gain. Straight to the point, Manuel states that it’s cheaper. You’re reducing your expenses using the resources you have. But he’s also interested in putting the ecological value he’s generated on his farm into numbers.
“If I were to quantify the economic impact of increasing my organic matter, water infiltration, or nitrogen, it would be immeasurable. I would never have the wealth in my lifetime to pay for those outcomes”.
