What I've Learnt From Spain's Farming World

I’m writing to you from the scorched country of Espana (Spain). It’s hot and sweaty and similar to the country around Broken Hill if you’re familiar or not it’s a lot of rocks, the difference is we’re 20mins from the beach and have plenty of flowing water somehow when it hasn’t rained for a while here.

Some things I’ve noticed about the Spanish communities and farmers in between them.

1. It’s accepted to have planted potatoes next to your mechanic living amongst the vines as they say. I don’t see this in Australia maybe because we don’t need to use all of our land but that my be our disadvantage that we’re not allowing crops close to residents and commercial, no se (I don’t Know)

2. What I do know is in Spain there is far less red tape, it can be a positive but also a negative for the farmers. They don’t have nearly the income we do in Australia which I’m extremely grateful for.

3. They have nailed “value adding” products on a grand scale. They have 1 million types of pig, beef and lamb cuts in the counter. More so pigs but the difference in Australia is how little our markets are. I’m in a town 10% of the size of my home town Dubbo 7,000 and they still have the variety that Sydney or Melbourne folk do. I’ll say there is 4 million people down the road but it allows people options in the country. If you’re to compare a Sydney Woolworths shop to Dubbo the variety is immense with the latter have few options to choose from.

4. Equipment isn’t high on the list for the farmers here, they’ve been manually growing their food for decades with quite literally a hoe and a singlet. Not many OHS rules apply before or after a siesta. I read in Farm Tenders email that Australian farmers currently have the most new equipment that we’ve ever had, have you bought recently?

   I want to raise money for a farmer to get him a tractor one day as I hope that I could be in a position to be able to do it myself.

5. Talking in Spanish (my partner more so) to a local farmer and he asked if farmers were respected in Australia or if it was good. I said “muy bien” but I meant it in terms of our return compared to there’s assuming everything. There’s a separation from farmers to consumers here too even though they’re closely woven into the fabric of the towns like I said at the beginning.

6. Wine is very cheap here. It is nearly cheaper to eat out every meal than it is to eat in. My breakfast of 3 people, 4 breads with jamon, cheese and tomatoes with 4 coffees was 14Euro’s about $20. I can’t eat egg on toast for less than that.

7. Community is at the heart of everything they do and food is the glue of it all. They come home for lunch everyday together as a family and go back to work afterwards. I’ve set the table countless times here as you would of Christmas. It’s nice to have that connection and reliability I suppose as everyone does the same. Good luck getting anything at the shops at lunch time.

Have a topic or some experiences email them into [email protected]

Adios!

P.S. Listen to the last episode of Farms Advice