Description

What if you could bring a dead river back to life by working with farmers, not against them?

In this powerful #REWIND episode, Silvia Quarta shares the story of a forgotten valley in one of Europe’s driest regions, where springs stopped flowing, wells ran dry, and the river disappeared. But through radical listening, community trust, and regenerative agriculture, a new vision is starting to emerge.

Rooted in hope, soil, and local food systems.

This episode is about reimagining what rural life can be, and showing that farmers, shepherds, and citizens can become stewards of large-scale ecological restoration.

🌱 Topics covered:

• Community-led ecosystem restoration

• Water retention and soil regeneration

• Rural resilience and land abandonment

• Regenerative agriculture as a water solution

• Local food systems and consumer connection

• Working with farmers to restore landscapes

• Building collective hope in degraded regions

⸻

This episode was made in partnership with Soil Capital ❤️ www.soilcapital.com

Hosted on Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

Transcription

• Speaker #0

  This week, I am in one of the driest places in the whole of Europe, the region of Murcia in Spain. In this specific watershed, the river has completely dried up, putting the survival of the entire community at risk. Thankfully, a small group of people made it their life mission to bring this river back. Listen to this episode to find out how they're planning to do that and how regenerative agriculture plays a central role in this project. This episode was made in partnership with Soil Capital. I am your host, Raphael. And this is the Deep Seed Podcast.

• Speaker #1

  Yeah, so actually right now we're in a piece of land that it's been an experimental plot for the past six, seven years on this farm. And that's what I've been managing until a year ago. So here we've tried to set up a system which is an agricultural system, but it's very diverse. finally showing it. But we realized that working on, this is only five hectares, the farm, it's a thousand hectares. And we realized that working, whether it's five, whether it's a thousand, doesn't matter. Working only on farm level, it's not enough. So with everyone else from living and working on the farm, we started talking about this Kipar watershed idea. So we are, the farm is set at the spring of a river, which is the Kipar River. And the spring is drying out. It's been contaminated with nitrates. It's suffering like most rivers and most springs in the Mediterranean. So we thought, what if we work at the valley level? So with all the landowners, all the farmers, all the people living in an area which is a watershed, it's a valley. So we are connected to the water and it makes much more sense than working on, I don't know, municipality or regional level. And then what if we try and bring the change at that scale? So that's what we're trying to do now. And we're working at the watershed scale.

• Speaker #0

  Okay, so you have this Kipar River that starts here at the farm and that normally flows through the watershed here. And that river has been drying out. And so you have this big project now. I read that it's a 30 years long project to try and revive.

• Speaker #1

  Many lifetimes long.

• Speaker #0

  Yeah, well, it's a forever project, of course. But yeah, it's a long-term project. It's not a quick fix. There's a long-term vision here to work within the watershed with different people, different farmers, different stakeholders to try to revive this river. Is that right? Yes. Maybe we could start with the assessment of the current situation with this watershed. What's the deal?

• Speaker #1

  Yeah, so in the past year, we've done a lot of participatory workshops with people from the area. farmers, livestock, farmers, teachers, school kids. So we've tried to put everyone together. First of all, to assess the situation. And really, there's a huge agreement on what the problematic is. So on one hand, it's great. Everyone agrees. We all know what's the problem. On the other hand, it means it's very big and very visible. And the main things are overexploitation of the aquifers and of water in general, contamination of the water, so it's not only too much of it which is used. because of the intensive agriculture increasing, but it's also contaminated because of fertilizers used in agriculture. And there's a huge flow of population that goes from the countryside to the city, so this area is highly depopulated. It's getting old. Probably within 10 years, most farmers here would be retired, which means more bigger companies coming in and buying land, possibly. So these are like the core elements. And then there's, of course, the element of the climate change, which makes farming in such a harsh landscape. We're at 1,000 meters elevation here. So we usually have snow in the winter. We have 40 degrees in the summer. So it's extreme weather. And now it's just becoming worse and completely shifting rainfall patterns. So it makes it really hard for a dryland farmer to make a living. So that's another huge challenge. And the farmers that are still here and want to be here cannot. It's really hard to make it. So these are the core issues that we're facing here.

• Speaker #0

  So clearly the situation here is very complicated. We have highly degraded landscapes, depleted aquifers, young people leaving and farmers about to retire. So how do we solve this? What's the plan?

• Speaker #1

  So we're trying things. We don't know how to go about it because we've never done it before. But basically we started steering everything we were already doing into this watershed instead of this farm. So as I was saying, all of these participatory processes, so we're looking for projects that allow us to involve people and we just, thanks to a European project which is called Humus, we... did all these workshops, which ended up with the signature of a manifesto, so like an agreement, a deal for the valley, where we wrote down what's the current situation, what do we want, which actions do we need to take. So we also tried to make it very practical. So the first thing is that, like, we're aware that we need to involve everyone and as many people as we can. So overall, we had, between these workshops and also... interviews that we did in collaboration with the CSIC, which is a research institute from Mulsia. They're also working on this watershed because they look for funding and they're part of this other European project, which is called Landex, and they're focused on flood and drought prevention, also through participatory processes. So we kind of united with that, okay, we're focusing on the same area, we're focusing on the same, very similar issues. So we combined all these workshops and interviews, and we got around 100 people to be interviewed or participating in the workshops. So I've been living here for five years. Afonso has been living here for 12. Other, Yannick, seven, eight. Paco was seven. So we have contacts here. So that was the first step. Okay, we call the people we know, invite them. So it's a guy that has a farm near us or he's the guy that is managing the almond trees or whatever. So you start there and then you start with going to the bar and putting signs there or talking to anyone at the bar, which I've done anyways always. So it's just talking about this and inviting them and asking them if they want to do the interview. And it's about collecting your voice and listening to you and not... we're not offering these workshops to come and tell you what you should do and then at first people are really not not trusting us like what what is the well what's underneath no and then usually what happens is that when they realize you're actually listening they're really happy and

• Speaker #0

  they're really surprised that someone is actually calling them and listening to them it's a very important first step is really invite people and then listen before you start talking or Yeah.

• Speaker #1

  Yeah, because anyways, like whatever solution we want to implement, even if we have the master plan, it's never going to happen if these people are not engaged in it. So we're not even really, I mean, we have our dream, though. We know we have a vision of we want this valley to be green, to be full of more projects, to have many things. But in the end, it's a bit more about getting out the vision that everybody has and implementing that. Otherwise, it's never going to be anything. and the vision of course is that We ended up creating one shared one, which is, well, that the rural doesn't die, that we can live in the countryside with the same services that people have in the city, that our daughters or grandkids can live here and have a proper living, that we can do agriculture and sustain ourselves without destroying our resources. So things that are really basic in a way, but I think it's quite... powerful to put them together and have people say yeah we actually agree on this and then action wise again a lot of things came up but uh yeah the other day that we had like the closing workshop um it was a lot about kind of setting up groups for example a group to promote local consumption of of local product and and sustainable products so how do we do that a cooperative or whatever finding solutions in that sense And then conversations about doing reforestation along the river, so how to get maybe a list of farmers that are interested in doing reforestation on their land, or creating groups for volunteers that would want to join all of these actions. So very practical things that now we're going to start engaging with.

• Speaker #0

  I really love that this wasn't about coming up with a master plan and imposing this plan. onto everyone else and saying, here's the plan, here's what we're going to do, please get behind it. It's exactly the opposite. They spend a lot of time talking and listening with the local community. So school children, teachers, local farmers, and anyone invested in this landscape one way or another. And once they found the common grounds, they started creating this master plan that everyone could get behind. I want to turn the conversation specifically towards agriculture and regenerative agriculture because that's the the central topic of the Deep Seed podcast, I assume that a huge part of the land from that region, that watershed landscape, is managed by farmers, right? So they are the steward of the land, so they are key to... the restoration of this ecosystem, right? Maybe first you could tell us a little bit about how you see regenerative agriculture as part of the solution, how it helps with the problems that you're facing here.

• Speaker #1

  Well, yeah, this is also everything we were experimenting exactly here. It's like, how do you build a system which is not destroying the resources, which is sustaining the soil, the biodiversity, but it's also productive. The system as it is now, it doesn't work. There's a drought, there's been three years of drought, no harvest of cereals, no harvest of almonds because then you have the frost. And it's true all of these things you cannot control with how you farm, you cannot control the flood, you cannot, well, you cannot control the climate, but you can diversify enough and prepare yourself and be resilient enough so so that it doesn't kill you, but... yeah you're you're maintaining and so i think it's multiple layers of regenerative agriculture on one hand is indeed the diversification the the rainwater harvesting all of these known to be more resilient using local varieties different varieties from the most conventional ones but then on the other hand i think there's also a big chunk of it which is um how to increase the value of what you produce and whether it's through promoting local consumption and make people a bit more aware of how nice it is to eat meat and cereals and almonds from your area rather than get the ones coming from California and not having an alternative.

• Speaker #0

  Yeah, okay. You expect buyers, especially from the local community, to understand the idea, the project of regeneration and to be willing to make an effort to buy these products rather than other products at the supermarket.

• Speaker #1

  Yeah, I think if we all agreed on this, like we all agreed on, we have a vision, which is... being able to sustain ourselves here and and being able to keep doing agriculture here then we're aware that the way we're doing it doesn't work so doing it regenerative means we're maintaining the resources we're improving the resources so then maybe we are willing to yeah work for it also as consumers yeah okay i see yeah although i know that most of the times the consumers willing to pay for this are outside which is also fine yeah yeah i think local awareness, it's super important.

• Speaker #0

  There's got to be a power to that, right? Because If I go to a shop and I see something that is branded sustainable or regenerative from across the world and I have no visual connection to that ecosystem, I've never been there, I don't know the people. Part of me will be like, yes, it's really nice to pay extra for this product because I know I'm doing good somewhere in the world, but I don't have the same emotional connection and motivation to pay more. that I would have if it was the ecosystem I live in. It's my region. It's my bio region, let's say. And I see it. I drive through it every day. And I get explained, actually, all of this goes towards using less chemicals, reviving the ecosystem, the biodiversity. You know, this river that used to flow here down in the village that's dry now, we're trying to revive it. I would be a lot more motivated to go deeper into my pockets. Obviously, not everyone can. No, exactly. But to go deeper into my pockets, even if it hurts a bit, because I know what I'm supporting.

• Speaker #1

  Yeah, of course, it's a balance. But indeed, when you know it's your neighbor, it's someone you bring the kids to school with. I don't know, when you know it's in your community, I feel like maybe there's a bit more desire.

• Speaker #0

  There's also a sense of when everyone else around you is supporting a project and helping, you feel more willing to participate as well. if you feel like you're the only one you're kind of like If no one else is making an effort, why should I, right? So that the feeling of being part of a bio-region, seeing that projects are emerging, that people are getting together to make this happen, it must somehow trigger something.

• Speaker #1

  Yeah, and that's really a feeling I got from these workshops, that people got their... Or through the interviews, you would see people very hopeless, in a way, or at the beginning of the workshops, and then at the end, of course, they're very much aware that, like, okay, now we're just talking, so nothing is changing. But yet, a sense of... a bit uplifted, a bit inspired, a bit feeling like, okay, I'm not alone seeing this shit around me and I'm not alone having to fight against it. There's other people that agree with me and maybe we can change something.

• Speaker #0

  That's a great feeling. It's amazing. Coming back to regenerative agriculture, I'm trying to understand how regenerative agriculture practices can help revive a whole river. What's the... Sort of the process, the science behind that.

• Speaker #1

  So the idea is that the river is dry because the water cycle is broken, which means there is a rainfall. Most water doesn't infiltrate. It flows away. So you have very fast water cycles. You have the rainfall, you have floods, and the water goes away. Plus there's the extraction of water from the aquifer, which means the level of the groundwater is going down. which means there's less water coming to the surface through springs. And one of the ideas of regenerative agriculture is to restore the soils and... Nor restored soil. What they do is that they act like sponges, which means they infiltrate more water. So by restoring the soil, you also restore the water cycle, which means it rains, the water infiltrates, it infiltrates slowly, it goes slowly into the next layer, into the groundwater. And then you have months later springs coming out. So you have this, you don't rely on the rainfall anymore. No, you're building a system which is spongy, which is resilient, and it's slower and more long-term. Well, now we're really relying only on the rain. All the water we get, a lot of it just goes away and floods all the coast cities. So what regenerative agriculture does by covering the soil, by doing water retention, by creating ponds and swales and tilling against. The slope, tilling much less. So all of this is indeed restoring the soil, restoring the water, restoring the water cycle. And reforestation actions and biodiversity of the whole system. There's also this research now that says that rainfall depends also on these bacteria that are killed by pesticides. So you know how the droplet, they have to hold onto something to make water.

• Speaker #0

  Okay. I didn't hear about that.

• Speaker #1

  It's dust or bacteria or very, you know, micro particles. And then apparently these bacteria are changing the temperature at which water condenses. So then they help to have rainfall at lower altitudes. So kind of having this like small, more local cycle rather than the big cycle.