- Speaker #0
So we are Terramai, we are a 562 hectare property. We do regenerative agriculture in a holistic way and one of our goals is to be self-sustainable in every aspect of our operation. We are fighting desertification, which has four pillars. The first is the natural, which disappears immediately if you don't take care of it. The second is the economical, because without nature there is no economy. Without economy, there is no society. And without society, the worst thing disappears, which is culture. The whole scope of this project was really to find a place where we feel home, where we feel safe, and with a little bit of control, of the knowledge that we will live for further generations on how to cope with this whole mess, not being so dependent on others. So that's the work we are doing. We want to share it with the world.
- Speaker #1
Welcome back to the Deep Seed Podcast. If you're interested in regenerative agriculture, you've definitely come to the right place. Because this week I am visiting the most impressive and the most ambitious regenerative farm I've ever seen. It's located in Portugal, close to the Spanish border. It's called Terramay and they do absolutely everything. So we'll talk about... market gardening, about compost, about agroforestry, about holistic management of cows and pigs and chickens. And there's just so much in this episode, so much knowledge, so much passion, so many stories. I definitely recommend listening until the end. Let's just get into it and you'll see what I mean. This episode was made in partnership with Soil Capital. I am your host, Raphael, and this is the Deep Seed Podcast.
- Speaker #2
Well, I'm Anna de Brito and you are?
- Speaker #0
David de Brito, of course.
- Speaker #2
And we arrived at Terramai six years ago. So when we arrived here, we realized that this was kind of a deserted area in terms of you didn't have a lot of people working here. You didn't have a lot of things going on. And we realized we really want to implement a project of regenerative agriculture and sustainable. hospitality.
- Speaker #0
At least 80% of the products that we are using while we're building, while we're cooking, while we're serving the community will come from our property, so that's something that we are striving for. In our restaurants right now we have two, we're already doing that. In Raia we even have a 92% of self-sustainability. And at the farm... Because of this impact of the restaurants and the hospitality concept that we have, we have to produce everything. So we produce vegetables, fruits, cereals, meat of many kinds, milk, olive oil. We transform products. We have our own concept for a big town like Lisbon with preheated meals. And that is our whole approach. So to be as self-sustainable as possible, regenerative as possible. and to bring as much food to the plate of our clients and partners and our own restaurants that represent regenerative agriculture in a manner that it's it's pure we start this farm tour with the market garden which is located just across the street from the main farm buildings this
- Speaker #1
looks a little bit different from what i'm used to when i'm visiting market gardens usually you get these very neat rows with one maybe two crops per row and very clean and neat paths separating the rows. But this is different, this is a lot wilder. This looks like a kind of crazy diverse vibrant thriving ecosystem really. And to the untrained eye this might look messy but in reality everything has been designed carefully to maximize the health of the ecosystem, the health of the soil and ultimately the quality of the ingredients produced.
- Speaker #0
Well, quite essentially when we started Teramai we knew that we had to build a market garden in a high top because we had the pre-existences and that's where we're going to build up our hotel. So you never do your garden in the top of a hill. It has some advantages like everything in life but it's not the most common place to do it and we had no soil at all at Teramai. So the first thing we did because we wanted to have the garden close to to the hotel so it's the the zone zero and one from permaculture we started to work with raised beds and we got soil from many different places from the property different kinds of soils also to experiment with it and the first year we could only work on raised beds because we really had no soil so we don't have profile a b and c it's just mother rock and where we are right now this This is the result of five years of work. where we deliver 85 tons of vegetables per year to some of the best gardens in Portugal. We are a micro seasonal market garden concept. We don't have winter houses, so we produce everything from the seed to the final plant. The plants are always exposed to the natural conditions of the weather, so we don't make that compromise. And we like to do something we call a polyculture within the polyculture. Be it raised bed or now these lines that we are seeing right here right now, we always have different cultures in the same line or next to one another. So after five years we have a lot of associations that we know that will work, that will profilerate, but also will change or give some very positive nuance in taste and texture to some of the vegetables that we are selling to the best restaurants in Portugal. So our clients are mostly Michelin-starred restaurants that can search for the best products and have the high skilled hands to transform it into a moment of pure magic. So that's why we can also get some of our investment back because the price of our market gardening is very high. So we cannot compete with normal industrial production companies.
- Speaker #3
To achieve this level of quality in your vegetables you need very good soil.
- Speaker #0
Definitely.
- Speaker #3
Could you talk us through the process of going from no soil to a really healthy soil with a vibrant microbial community in the soil that is nourishing your vegetables and producing such a high quality of food?
- Speaker #0
Well, you always have to take it holistically. You have to do many things to achieve that objective. But in the end, of course, the more exposed the plant is and the better the soil the plant is living in, the more dense minerally. the plant will be. And I do believe that if we think of plants and the soil microbiome and the human microbiota, it's everything almost the same. So when you think that the plant is more tasteful or the aroma is stronger, that means that your bacteria within your gut are just calling and craving for it. So everything walks together. In my opinion, the most important thing when you're doing a regenerative market gardening is that you have to know that per hectare you need 20 tons of organic matter. And that's when you start working. You have to find a way to produce within your collective effort, holistic effort, a way to produce this amount of organic matter. Because without that you're not regenerative. You might be sustainable, but most likely degenerative. Because every market gardening, it's a super intensive community of plants growing and lands that is being used. So that is a little bit the the most difficult part to produce the organic matter and to know how to be regenerative. There are many techniques. I think Terra Mai, we are not pioneers on anything besides the will and the responsibility of building up 20 tons of organic matter that will keep our soils healthy. So that's our main focus not to lose that track because we don't buy anything on the outside so all of these beautiful bags of black turf that some of our friends are using while saying they're doing regenerative market gardening we don't do that we do the real thing when
- Speaker #3
you say producing 20 tons of organic matter per hectare you mean what do you mean exactly so if you have one hectare of a
- Speaker #0
Market Garden. At least in our experience here, and I think it adapts to many others as well, mostly in the south of Europe where we have much bigger temperature amplitudes, a lot of agents that are washing away the soils and most of the nutrients that we could keep on them. That has to be your focus because every time you take a product out of a line, to let it rest you have to feed the line back again you have to cover it give it time three to six months without without doing photosynthesis so that you have so so much grass is growing afterwards when you're replanting and reproducing so in our case what that means is that we have to use our chicken our pigs our cows our horses and everything that we're not using at our restaurants and and other prediction units so that we can re-bring it to our... market garden.
- Speaker #3
Okay, so what you're saying is that instead of bringing bags of compost from outside of the farm, you work within the farm to find nutrients that you need to feed the soil in your market garden. Because obviously every time you harvest a vegetable and you take it out of the farm, you're taking nutrients out. Exactly. That's what you're saying, right?
- Speaker #0
Exactly.
- Speaker #3
But so it only works because you have other operations on the farm.
- Speaker #0
Yes, imagine if you're developing a one hectare market gardening and you're just using that hectare, it's going to be impossible. Of course, you need somebody bringing that input to you. Of course, you can have partnerships and everything. But at Terramai, we do our chicken express compost, which is something that happens between 45 and 60 days that you can input in the garden again. we have 16 horses that are roaming freely but we always have two in a box so that we can collect the organic matter they're bringing us, their presence. The same happens with our 80 mother cows and the rest of the whole bovines we have and animals. And we also do other things like Terra Preta, we have a vermicompostor, we do bazillions of composté, so it's a whole integrative way of looking at it. knowing that if you take out you have to give back and that terrami that's that's what makes us a little bit different than all of the other regenerative farms we're not just producing one thing regeneratively we're doing it holistically so we produce the vegetables the animals we have the restaurants and all of this circle circular not just economy but but organization gives us the potential to do that, which is very complicated because 20 tons of organic matter are really a lot, you cannot underestimate it.
- Speaker #3
And so would you say that it's almost impossible to be truly regenerative if you don't have a diversified operation that allows you to feed each other, you know, the fact that you have animals to bring in the nutrients here, that you have this to feed the restaurant, that the restaurant scraps then feed your animals, that's just one example of all the things you're doing here.
- Speaker #0
Well, I wouldn't be fundamentalist because that fundamentalism and absolutism doesn't bring us anything in any topic. Nevertheless, in our operation, that is a reality. If I would be a farmer in Holland with one hectare, just like I said, of course, I would have some friends that I trust doing different kinds of job that would bring that input. Or my choice would be to buy it from an organic turf production, industrial production unit. I don't know, there's many options. But of course, if it's... It's integrative, it's much more interesting because you have the full control of what you're doing. Nevertheless, we are very privileged to have 500 hectares and a diversified production unit and, of course, also the investment that allows us to be a lab and to develop these over the years to achieve those objectives. If I would be depending on my market gardening to be profitable within a year, I would have to approach it in a different kind of way.
- Speaker #1
On the edge of the market garden, there is a parcel with dozens of chickens running around. Between the chickens and the garden, we find what David calls the Chicken Compost Express. A simple yet brilliant design to turn organic matter and chicken manure into amazing compost in only 6 weeks time. This is the primary source of compost for the market garden and one of the key secrets behind its success.
- Speaker #0
Back to the micro seasonal market gardening that we are doing without any plastic, without any inputs from the outside. One of the most important things that we have is that from our two restaurants and our digital business, where we do around 800,000 revenue in total over the year, we can get all of the rest products that we have into one of the most brilliant things that we developed in the last couple. of years, which is our chicken compost express. This means that everything that we're using at the restaurants, at the farm that we are not selling, so all of the veggie rests and even meat because most people don't know but chicken are the last living dinosaurs on planet earth. What we do is very simple, so we bring everything that we're not selling or the rest from the restaurant, we put it in the first pile, that's where the chicken come out. And of course they're not always dependent on this kind of food. We also have our own grain that we produce, that we give them at night. And every second day they have access to fresh grass and aromatics in our mandala place over there. So we just open a different door. But besides that, they start working over there. We move the compost or the manure and the rest of the food every day into different piles. and it It moves towards the end of the production, depending on the weather and the humidity that we have in the air, the amount of rain and all of these very demanding and dynamic aspects of our production. We might as well use water to give some humidity to the compost. But the beauty of it is that within 45 days to 60 days we get to an end product that looks like that. That means the brilliant part of this kind of compost is that you can use it immediately again. So while you have to wait for months when you're doing it with cow manure or with horse manure, you really have to let it sit for six months or one year depending on what it is, here we can be really fast. So that's why I'm really happy that we have these ladies. We have around 200 chickens. This is just a part of it. Of course, they produce eggs, but...
- Speaker #1
this is the main goal so to to really produce very fast big amounts of of compost that we can reintegrate in our horticulture we now start heading further away from the main farm building and from the market garden we walk for maybe three or four minutes until we arrive at one of the many different agroforestry systems here on the farm since you're listening to this in audio format i'm going to try and paint a picture of what this looks like for you So basically you have rows of densely planted fruit and nut trees and these rows are planted in key line design 12 meters apart from each other and between the rows of trees you get this you have first a strip of wildflowers in the middle you have a cover crop in this case it's a fava bean then you get another strip of wildflowers and then you arrive at the end of the 12 meters to the other Row of Trees.
- Speaker #3
Okay, we're standing now in the middle of your agroforestry system.
- Speaker #0
One of them.
- Speaker #3
One of them? Okay, could you tell us more about it?
- Speaker #0
Okay, so we have over five to five different tree species. Within every species of tree we have five different typologies because we are not building for the big industry. So we want to build for our restaurants and our hotels. So we want ripe fruit over a long period of time, so that we don't have to... pick all of the fruit at the same time and work it and also because we want that diversity so imagine if you'd be a guest at our restaurants or even our hotel in a space time of 15 days you could experiment different types of pitches for instance and we think that's quite pleasant and interesting also because like this we also have an enhanced biodiversity and the beauty of this is that right now we're going to intensify the agroforest So we're going to bring some more lines to make it more dense now that the first phase of the of the system is integrated and what we are seeing here are just two lines of trees which are integrated with some fava beans for the peak so this is not the normal fava we consume as humans they are for the peak and we have on the left and on the right side some grass that will be cutted now to put back into the line of trees and these will just be rolled down with a tractor so that we can put as much hydrogen into the soil. So this is a completely self-functional system and the beauty of it is that we can also introduce animals. So after we put the grasses down and lower these down some grass will come out again and we'll make, we'll bring our chicken tractors again and normally we're speaking in six hectares of this agroforestry we can have around a hundred birds for four months which is quite... productive and interesting. The other thing that is interesting is that while we are producing perennial cultures that we can also put in the lines of trees we do stuff like tomatoes, aromatic herbs, you name it. That's in between lines we can produce real fava beans or potatoes, we can do strawberries. So as far as we get from our house that's where we have the intensive regenerative market gardening. and here starts the super extensive. So this is where we produce around 10 tons of potato per year. This is where we do it. Or even the tomatoes, this is where we do it. So we try not to use the soil as a basis but already a system that is working, that is perennial, and then we just add the seeds and use the structure that we built for that purpose. So like this we don't have to to dig anything. We are working under the principles of succession agroforestry and syntropic agriculture. So the most beautiful thing about this orchard is not properly that we are doing a system that many other people are doing. The beautiful thing I think is that in Portugal normally Ernst Goetsch would say that every orchard has to be planted from north to south so that you have maximal sun exposure for photosynthesis. That is not our problem in Alentejo. What we really need to think and sort out is the water. So instead of doing these north to south lines we did it in keyline, which is a method that allows you to adjust a little bit the level curves and like this we can withhold much more water. It's super effective, it's very cheap and that's something that I would advise to everybody to do. as long as they have the mechanics of the orchard under control. So if you are completely depending on a tractor to go around and do the whole work, of course this method is not the best, but if you do it like we do with almost no intervention, everything almost done by hand, then it's really amazing the enhance of of the water infiltration that you can do by designing your orchard like this. that's the most beautiful. The rest is like most other people are doing so different canopy sizes and different functions within the line trees that lose leaves in the summer and give light to the others that have a lower straight so we just follow the books adapted to our reality. I think that what is really curious about our intervention is the key line design. and that you produce a lot of food annuals within the system.
- Speaker #3
You said that you have 55 different species of trees growing. Do you also have pioneer trees that are just there for boosting the ecosystem but without producing any?
- Speaker #0
So we have the first two always. I don't recall the name in English but the first really grows as you can see in the images quite quite fast. That's the first pioneer, then we have a second one that has the same or will achieve the same height, but it will take much longer. And that's when we come to the part which is a little bit of hocus-pocus in the successive agroforestry design or even also syntropic agriculture. Because what we do is that when the second tree achieves the height that we understand is important for us, We start doing also epic cuttings in the first trees so that they send a message of stress to all of the other living organisms in the soil and the succession starts to happen. So when we planted these trees we used mycorrhizae, so we put all of the the roots into mycorrhizae and they were planted like this just to support this element of communication. You get like a a different atmosphere, different shades than you get in a different place because we are really creating an ecosystem that it's not common to see anywhere. It's really making a mimic of nature in a very productive way. So I really advise this to everybody that wants to do a regenerative, sustainable or organic approach to their orchards and the only limitations you have is how do you structure yourself industrially so if you're selling for a supermarket and you need the perfect ripe fruit in that day of the year, these will be much more expensive and technically demanding. But if you have an approach of farm to table, if you have your direct customers, the output you take is much more than the input because everything is living from the same system. As I was saying before, this that we are planting here, it's feeding the soil. these herbs that we have here is what is going to cover our lines during the summer so everything is very integrative and while you're pruning you're doing the same yeah so it makes a lot of sense it's very beautiful it's very motivating but of course it takes a lot of of work and attention and knowledge and then it's time for instance here we're looking at artemisia a grass Because we are now designing a new system, we are doing it with Mark from Quinta das Abelhas in Freixo do Maio. He's amazing, I think he's the most known disciple from from a syntropic agriculture. He's trying to make just what they were doing in Orros de Agua in Bahia in Brazil in a Mediterranean context. And it is insane because as we know trees are the only living being that can change the climate in a small place. Through expiration, transpiration, they can create their own climate. And that's what we are hoping here. Of course, very careful, without many expectations, but we believe so. And this Artemisia is quite interesting because it's a perennial. It has a lot of potential. It's very healthy as well. But it's one of these herbs that you can have in your line. and will allow you not to have so much spontaneous growth of other cultures. So it will take some of the minerals that most of the spontaneous herbs we have here need, and it will make a cover crop which is beautiful, aromatic and helping in many senses. So not just with the herbs, but also if you smell it, it's really an all-round, let's call it, or a round-up. because it performs in many ways also with little animals and things that normally are a problem for trees. It helps a lot. So you learn some tricks to reduce your work, but it's pretty intense and everything gets back to the same. So what is the most important is that you give back to the trees and to your soil always what you took out. So you have to be much more worried about what you're putting in after you take out.
- Speaker #1
Yeah.
- Speaker #0
in this kind of products. Because if you fail in that, then you cannot produce anymore. That's the most important.
- Speaker #1
Yeah, so people say you are what you eat, but then your trees are what you feed them to.
- Speaker #0
Yes, I heard lately, so we are producing a festival called Soil to Soul in Switzerland and Portugal, and we say that you are what you eat. And lately I heard a guy that started a different concept, but then he finalized his speech by saying, so maybe we are what what we ate, ate. Which is already very awkward and irritating to hear. Because when you say we are what we eat, it goes back to the soil. Definitely, you know, it's a philosophical way of saying if you don't respect where you come from or what you step into, it won't be good. And that's the base of life and our existence and of course we forgot it. So we are what we eat and yeah, that's it. But it goes much deeper. to the soil and to the soul than just what we are conventionally eating every day. So it's much more than that. Another thing that we eat is also hope. That's also one of the things that keeps us moving.
- Speaker #1
And that's part of what you're doing here. It's not just regenerating the ecosystem on your farm, but it's also...
- Speaker #0
Well, it's a drop of hope. I was a consultant, so I was kind of an arse-fader before. I did everything to make money, not knowing that I was harming other people sometimes. And I stumbled upon a TED talk from Alan Saver where he was talking about desertification. And it came quite clear to me that desertification is not only natural. So without nature there is no economy. And if you have no economy, people have to move somewhere else to find their labor, to find some food, to find something to subsist. Without people we don't have society. And the problem is that if you don't have society, you also don't have culture. And that's what we've been gathering in the last 12,000 years since we are farmers and since the halocene came towards us. Changed everything and I just realized by having three kids that I didn't want it to work anymore just to make the money I was making which was good and it was comfortable and it was brilliant. But I said from that moment on it was around six years before we bought and founded the farm, Terramai. that I wanted to do something positive for the future of my kids because this land doesn't belong to us, it was lent to us by our succession so we have to give it in a better condition or at least the same to our children, then we just got it for ourselves. So in that sense that's the work we're doing here, so we're trying to create a drop of hope. that shows that it's possible to do regenerative agriculture while healing the soil, bringing communities back to desertified locations with a strong circular economy that is self-sustainable. So it's not about being multi-millionaires with regenerative agriculture, you can do it in a different way. I think it's easier to lose money with agriculture than to make it. And hopefully to motivate a lot of people to become farmers and to carry on this work which which is so essential. for the future because in the whole of Europe you have less than 10% of the farmers are under 40. In Portugal that goes down to six. If we speak of parity there are three percent of women farming in Europe. That's nothing because agriculture is not sexy. And regenerative agriculture which nobody believes in, that's always the first question in conventions. Could you feed the world with regenerative agriculture? Of course not. But it's not because regenerative agriculture doesn't have everything we need to do it. It's just because only 8% of the farmers in Europe are doing organic farming and 2% of them are using regenerative skill set or tools. So if we would enhance regenerative farming or this way of being in the world to a much bigger scale, of course it would be possible. And not only because there would be food enough, but also because one tomato from regenerative agriculture might have at least eight times as much nutrient and vitamin density as any other food that we might intake. Plus it doesn't have all of the antibiotics and bullshit that big companies that are the ones that are producing the seeds that feed us and the medicaments that are healing us. It's a completely dead end the way we are farming today, from the seed to the methods and the food and the medicaments that are treating us, because it's not going to work many years anymore. There will be a collapse very soon. It makes no sense. So that's why we are here, to prove that it is possible to have a kind of a circular economy that will allow us to... prepare mankind for a dramatic raise on temperature and a weather complexity that we humans will never understand. Because, for instance, in Portugal this year, we were having heavy rains of 20 millimeters in the first of May. In the last 10 years that never happened. And it's not that it's good or bad, we just have to understand what is going to happen and start to develop strategies that will allow us to take the best out of it when it happens. I have to say I completely agree with you and that's the exact reason why I'm here today. I also changed career and I'm spending all my time trying to bring the stories of pioneer regenerative farmers to as many people as possible because I am convinced that we need to advance as many people as possible to learn how to farm regeneratively because we're going to need it for future generations. So for sure, I completely agree with that and it's great too. to see people like you who are leading the way and showing that it's possible to produce a high quantity of food, high quality of food, high nutrient density, regenerating the ecosystem at the same time, creating jobs, local jobs.
- Speaker #1
Because we forget a lot that agriculture was the first culture that mankind talked about or at least the first translation in that sense and it's the base of everything because I also believe that that's how we developed into mankind. It was because our real brain is not exactly here it's the gut and and it tells through feeding ourselves that we developed ourselves because we developed a memory you know um and in that sense the only thing that we we have to do because it's not even that we are learning new techniques in many cases we are going back to something that we knew before the only problem is that we're forgetting it because most of us are living in a kind of a fight between the real life and the digital world and The digital world is very crazy because it gives you the feeling that you don't need to know shit because you have everything, all of the power of the world in your hand. And it's not true. We are completely depending on many factors. In Portugal, just happened two days ago before we are here together, we had a cutout of power which was general in the whole country and also Spain. And who can tell us that that is not going to happen again? And if it happens for four days, you know what happens? There is no internet, there is no light, there is no food, there is no transportation, there is no shit. So either you are in a self-sufficient environment or you'll have a lot of problems. And that's what we have to think as well globally, is to go out of this vanity, insane craziness of globalization, because it's not going to work anymore. So we have every land, every continent. It doesn't mean that we have to stop. communicating and sharing and proliferating together but it means that we have to have some level of self-sustainability so that we can ensure our subsistence when problems that we cannot control come towards us. And that will happen even more often in the future and sometimes we just forget that we are completely depending on what these insane and crazy a succession of events that brought us to the Earth as a living... I don't even know how to say it, but to exist in a universe where we are alone, it's depending on other things than ourselves. So we have to be humble, and instead of taking the most out of the land, we have to nurture it and be part of the system. That's what we are doing here. We do a lot of mistakes, we lose a lot of money. But it never felt so good.
- Speaker #0
Awesome! That was great, that was great. Love it, love it. It's amazing.
- Speaker #2
I now leave David and meet with Elias who is in charge of the livestock operation here at Terramay. He jumps onto a quad bike and we follow him with the car for about seven or eight minutes until we arrive in a beautiful place. Imagine rolling hills of pastures dotted with beautiful old oak trees. The grass is high, lush. super vibrant and full of colors because there are so many different species of flowers in bloom at this time of year. And there, eating this beautiful grass, is a large herd of cows. So Elias proceeds to move them to the next plot. And when he's finished, we start our conversation.
- Speaker #3
Yeah, so we're with the cows here. We have the breed that's called Mertulenga. It's from Mertula, like a city south of here. There is an old breed that is highly adapted to that climate, meaning it's a small cow with short legs, has less water consumption. They are like the goats of the cows. They don't have problems with steep hills or an environment that is more challenging. They continue grazing even with 40 degrees. Like they are really robust. In three years working here, I think two times a cow was sick. Like we don't have any problems, they give birth alone, they're very... yeah it's a very strong cow the downside is a bit they're very shy they can be yeah nervous in small spaces they turn quickly aggressive and so it's not the easiest cow to handle although it's they seem very chill now um but also by the type of management since we're working very close with them and moving them almost daily and they adapt and getting more calm like compared to when i started here they were way more nervous They occur in three colors. You have the Maliadu, that's with the white base and then the brown dots. You have Roussillio, when the brown and white kind of mingle into each other, like this one over here for example. And then you have Vermelio, that are the brown ones. They are now since two years completely grass-fed, grass-finished, meaning there's no food. not even hay or whatever coming from outside except the neighbor where we sometimes cut the grass because he's not doing it and then we have some hay but it's all from here yeah meat-wise it's not the easiest to cook and because they are athletes they don't have much intermuscular fat and um yeah
- Speaker #0
it's a special it's a special taste yeah you said that they're in very good health yeah you attribute that to the breed or to the management of both both i would say yeah
- Speaker #3
yeah sure yeah how does this type of management contribute to the health of the cows so we're working in a holistic or multi-paddock grazing system or call it what you want to call it um meaning we keep them close together we move them regularly to prevent over grazing and to imitate what ruminants would do in the in the wild with predators keeping them together so here it's us and since there are no predators Meaning they eat very diverse because they are in this group effect. It's like having eight siblings on the table. You don't choose anymore what you eat, you just eat. So meaning they have a very diverse diet. They don't nibble only on certain plants. They usually eat more diverse, which is a key factor of nutrients in the meat too. They don't get any medication except the mandatory vaccines. We stopped de-warming them since they are moving. All the time, the life cycle of... Until the parasite in the shit develops, the cow is already gone. Like there is no chance that the worm can keep on going.
- Speaker #0
Could you give us a little bit more technical detail about how you plan your rotational grazing system, the size of the paddocks compared to the number of cows, how long you leave them, how often you move them, all of that?
- Speaker #3
So the whole farm is divided into sectors which have different sizes. It's more like where we have fixed fencing. and also what makes sense from looking at the land, from water access and so on. And they always enter a sector which then is divided again by electric fencing like we see here. And depending on the season, depending on the number of cows, and depending on what we want right now from the land, and the size and the frequency of moving changes. So for example right now we are in the end of the growing season. but this year we still like yesterday we still had rain end of april and we have perfect temperatures now around 20 degrees um it's amazing for grass so i don't want the cow to go very slow and eat until the ground because i want the the regeneration to happen really quick so i can go another time so now we have the last pastures where i will go one more time and soon i will start my last round which then is very slow very tiny the the the paddocks so that the cow eats and tramples everything so we have a nice layer of mulch on the on the soil but right now i just want them to light graze eat the tops do some disturbance and then out again so that the grass can still one more time regrow until we enter
- Speaker #0
the summer okay so how do you decide all of these different factors how do you know
- Speaker #3
how long to leave them for and how many to have in what size and all of that what's do you monitor that do you have a specific we have a plan we have a grazing plan and then we have different factors for example in the beginning of the season you have still slow grass growth especially especially this year for example december we didn't have any rain and then you want to gain time right so you make also the past just small you try to like then I was counting hours like I tried to let them as long as possible in there before moving to gain a day or two at one point and then now there's abundance of food so as I explained you want to trust it's always about to What's best for the soil and how can I generate more food in a natural way, obviously. And then of course there are appointments like the doctor is coming or we wean or whatever. So you have all these appointments, you have holidays, people are going to holidays. So maybe then you also have to adapt a little bit, making the pastures bigger or go slower or whatever suits. And then you write your plan with all your appointments and important things happening. And hope the weather is playing around. along and yeah then you write your plan and hope that it works more or less okay yeah it's a system that works very well especially in um because this farm is very uh how to say heterogene like it's very diverse like you have steep hills you have some places that are more flat you have places with more trees with less trees like it's a very it's it's hard to manage a land that's hard to manage because it's extremely diverse and the cows are especially this breed is a very nice tool to get to all the spots because most of the farm is only suitable for grazing with the right animal because as i said it's deep rocky whatever and they never broke a leg or whatever they're they're very well adapted as i said already and you can scale it like if it's 80 or 120 cows or 200 there are some points where you have way more work but in general it's not changing much and this is also why this is very interesting because of the scalability compared to other operations where every hectare more means another employee and this is what makes it very different different interesting yeah does it take a lot of work to manage the cows to move them every day to to deal with no uh if i would only do the cars it wouldn't be a full-time unemployment. Yeah. With daily moving. Yeah. As soon as the cows have learned the system, if they know, okay, when the guy comes and shouts, we move, so they play along, then it's quite easy on a daily basis. I think it's one of the most important or most effective ways to do regeneration because of the scalability. A lot of land is not suited for anything else than animals. It's important to integrate the animals again we destroyed so much of nature's natural functions that we have to again bring that back to the land and since everything is fenced off there are no predators anymore we have now to play a key role in that and yeah if you eat meat or not there's nothing bad about this and it's important to integrate animal in the landscapes more and more yeah i think it's Very rewarding job to do. Sweet. Yeah.
- Speaker #2
Another quick drive and we arrive at another spot where maybe 40 or 50 black pigs are there hanging out. When Elias arrives with the quad, they just run after him and follow him around, visibly very excited to see him.
- Speaker #3
Yeah, so we have black pigs. The most important thing for these pigs is the Montanera, the time from September, October to February, March, when all the acorns drop from the trees. This is where the pig thrives the most and this is also by the end of that time you want to butcher them.
- Speaker #0
Do you also sort of graze them rotationally, change the pastures every so often?
- Speaker #3
Yeah, here it's more like an extensive grazing system I was talking about the sectors so so far they move between sectors. I want to experiment more with electric fencing, but especially during the acorn season they are extremely focused on the acorns. And respecting fencing is a difficult thing. So far they move between the sectors.
- Speaker #0
So they have a wider space to move through.
- Speaker #3
And slower, way slower. And also with the pigs. And during summer they stay at one spot. So they will move again, but then they stay... somewhere down at Alkeva where they have easy access to water and because this is then the main problem in summer they can't cool their bodies without water so it makes it way more difficult to keep them moving in the summer when some of the lakes dry out and and so on and also the pig likes as very strong habits like where they sleep where they shit where they do whatever so also a daily movement is maybe harder to like adapt them to it whilst with the cows for example it's easier so this is also why we move in sectors so they have at least two or three weeks at one bigger place where they wander around before then they move to the next one. They don't overgraze so quickly because they dig, they eat insects, they eat a little flower here, then they find an acorn. It's not like they have their favorite grass which they continuously overgraze. I don't know if you saw that hillside. They can open the soil quite a lot and then you have to be careful with that. That can be helpful because it can activate the seed bank, it can help to get some of the grass away, so the young trees have more space to grow. But there's also a big danger of erosion if they're too long at one spot, you have this moon landscapes with a lot of erosion.
- Speaker #0
And so you said that once a year they eat the acorns, maybe you could explain that in a bit more detail and explain the...
- Speaker #3
you know the ecosystem we're in now and as far as i know this whole montado system with the with the with the oaks um yeah it's man-made and these pigs kind of developed or extremely well adapted to to eating these acorns they can transform it extremely well and this is when they take on weight like crazy and it also um like in the taste of the meat you have this nuttiness um which
- Speaker #0
people love a lot this is why they buy the the ham from it um so that's the most important thing with these pigs that they that they have access to to the acorns yeah it's a way of making the most of resources you have on the farm since it's a montado ecosystem you have these oak trees some of them give acorns and very few there's very few things you can actually do with these acorns
- Speaker #3
There are like Fréjodomeo for example, they have a big they have a beautiful montado and they harvest them and they make flour out of it coffee there are a lot of products you can do it's very healthy for human consumption too but since our montado is has suffered a lot from i think over generations already we were talking about the goats they were roaming around freely here for a lot of time before we for the farm got founded we have a bit of a problem with the trees we have a lot of old
- Speaker #0
trees which are slowly dying and we have this generational gap to the younger trees so it would make sense to start collecting acorns here because you need a dense montar with a lot of acorns on the ground and then with some kind of machinery you can you can pick a lot okay so because the the land here before you arrived and started this management i mean you the i mean teramai yeah as a as a team the the The land was being overgrazed for a long time by goats. Therefore, the old big trees that were already there were well established and protected. But all of the younger ones were prevented from growing. That's why you don't have this succession of young trees. And I guess by using this kind of management with pigs and using the acorns in that way, focus more on regenerating the ecosystem and on the pig production rather than
- Speaker #3
the acorn production itself exactly yeah i guess the important part here is that they can activate seed banks what i was saying if you have a very dense layer of grass and the cows go through and they open up the soil a bit you often see young oaks not having problems going through a thick layer of of grass and the pigs they don't touch young trees really maybe accidentally they dig one out but what i observed that's not really an issue and when they open these spots you often see some young oaks that are still standing and now suddenly have a lot of space and light. And then again, they eat different things than the cows. So if you have them first, they will already eliminate some of the acorns. You make a better use of what you have, to put it like that. So they will eat what is most important to them and then the cow comes and they will just cut the rest.
- Speaker #0
They're quite complementary to each other. They have a different impact on the soil, on the land.
- Speaker #3
I think in this different system, yeah.
- Speaker #2
Another very cool thing about this farm is that it is located alongside the Alkeva lake. And Anna and David have invested in a boat to offer an extra experience to guests coming to the farm. Anna takes us on a boat trip to reach one of their restaurants. And halfway through, we stop for a quick chat.
- Speaker #4
So basically, we are on the Alkeva. It's the biggest artificial lake in Europe. It was created, I'm not quite sure, I think 15 years ago, 15 to 18 years ago. yeah you see from here it's it's portugal it's the border to portugal and there's spain so it's based on the on the river guardiana river guardiana which uh yeah basically starts in spain and when passes through portugal and it's always the it has always been the border river between portugal and spain so
- Speaker #0
cool so we're really here in the middle like we're in the water on one side we have portugal on the other side we have spain How cool is that?
- Speaker #4
Exactly. And as you see, there's almost like nothing. You see, it's just hills, trees, nature, but you don't see a lot of buildings. So it's not really developed. And I think it's amazing. And you hear the silence. Yeah, you can go fishing. There's a lot of water activities, which we also are currently involving with a small boat. We also have two canoes. So whoever visits us and is our guest, there's always a possibility to make a canoe trip or to take the boat to the restaurant. or have a picnic or something. So yeah, we also tailor specific experiences, which we combine with food and sustainable gastronomy on the boat, because we think it's a very nice experience connecting people with nature. And it's beautiful.
- Speaker #0
So this is a another way to diversify your business model you have. Sure, different.
- Speaker #4
Definitely, because I think regenerative agriculture is our main base core, right? That's the core operations. That's why we came here. it's all about the farm I really want to show that regenerative agriculture is possible to put it in practice and we are actually living it but also you need to show it to people right you need to have people over you need to receive guests you need to give them the possibility to to be part of the whole things to participate in workshops to go to the garden to be part of a harvest so basically it's our interpretation of connection with nature and connection to regenerative agriculture and sustainable hospitality there's also a certain um I won't say craziness, but you really need to focus on that and you really need to believe that it's possible, that this is going to flourish one day, right? And that this is actually working. And so there's a lot of courage from all of us involved to really say, okay, let's really try to walk the talk. Let's really try to change something. Let's really do that step, move here, and try to show that it's possible.
- Speaker #0
But it's a massive change in your life. right you're going from the city having kids to moving to a different country in a very remote area starting a farm from scratch it's a completely different life it's a big step so first of all where did the decision come from and
- Speaker #4
and then how did you experience all of that big change for us it was clear okay david is portuguese so we always there was always the connection right and i lived uh four years in lisbon in my 20s so i i really admire the country i really love the i think there's a great life quality in this and we were we already had two kids uh that time in berlin and i thought like okay they're very how can i say conditioned in the urbanized reality right they they wake up and it's always like no no no no no no no it's red light you cannot go here you cannot do this so it's always no restricted and i think like there is more specifically to the next generation which has to in front a lot of challenges there is climate change there is i mean let's not go into that because those are really probably be too much for this format, but it's a very, I wouldn't say frightening, but challenging reality, which my kids are going to face and the next generation is going to face. So I think it's really important that they connect to nature, that they know where they're coming from and that they know how to, that they grow strong in a way. And we wanted to give them that possibility. We really wanted to give them the possibility to nourish, to be connected and to thrive in a natural ecosystem and know that. And it's a skill set which is really important for them to have. And yeah, we talked about this and Thomas was really enthusiastic. And of course, when Thomas said, okay, let's go, the whole plan grew a bit bigger. So then we were traveling around, visited a lot of different properties, also in Agar with different properties and possibilities in whole Portugal. Yeah, and actually fall in love with this beautiful spot here in the Landraal, because it's really... really far away from a lot of things. It has the connection to Spain. It has these two kilometers of water line. Yeah. So it was the perfect setup. Amazing. Yeah, but for sure. And David was always the one really pushing for it ideologically. Like, okay, we really have to go there. We have to make a change. And really, really wanted to be one of the pioneers in making the difference and walking the talk. But when we arrived, of course, This came coming from Berlin. I'm from Berlin. It was a difference. a very strong difference and um yeah i told the story before but i think it's funny to tell again so we arrived here and there was this caretaker caretaker couple um working with us and i was like okay we are really remote and where are we exactly how's this going to happen how's this going to turn out and there was a moment we were playing with the kids outside in the garden and she said like everybody shut up and i said kids be silent be silent and she just put her foot on the ground and she took up a snake with her bare hand lighted a cigarette and said you kids come over it's time for you guys to learn about snakes so i said like wow this is a lot of calamity jane power and i really need to adapt to that reality but in the end it's it's it's beautiful and it's really interesting because if you move out of your comfort zone you really You grow and you realize that there's so much power within you and all of us, which is like kind of covered up when you're always living the routine.
- Speaker #0
Is it hard sometimes being so far away from bigger cities, from more people, more urban areas?
- Speaker #4
Sure, sure. It's not always just a romanticized version. Definitely not. There's a lot of moments of questioning. Is this the right decision or also loneliness because you're very far away, you're very not connected. I'm not so much connected like I was before to my family, my sister, my friends. So of course there is this lack of social life. But yes, in the last two or three years I really felt this changing because we worked so hard for it to grow and for this whole project to thrive. And I think we made it somehow possible to attract really interesting, very... inspiring people which are working with us, so and which joined the project, right? So you met Elias and you met Lena, you met a lot of people already on our farm and on the different places. And with all of these people, with all of our friends and people which are working with us and fighting with us to make this project work, this would never, never work. And it doesn't matter how many millions you would put in it. In the end, it's the people who believe in it. It's the true energy, the people. push into it, put into it.
- Speaker #2
After this wonderful moment on the lake, we arrive at Raya, one of the two restaurants opened by Anna and David. While the chef prepares our meals, we take this opportunity to talk about the sustainable gastronomy part of the operation here at Terramai.
- Speaker #0
Well, so we decided three years ago to open Raya, the restaurant, first of all, because we already had created the farm. The first farm operations were running. We had the animals, the chicken, the cows and our market gardening already implemented. And we saw everything growing and it was already there. And yeah, we were, of course, developing ways to make it work in terms of sales. And we had an important restaurant and great restaurant partners, which are our partners until today. from MIGA, from Encanto, very nice chefs and very nice restaurants, sustainable restaurants. Of course, Lara and Todd from Lisbon and also in Evora, a lot of nice partners. So we sold, we started selling our products basically to these kind of restaurant partners. But also since we were challenging the garden and the whole farm project itself, we were also challenging ourselves in terms of, okay, regenerative agriculture is one part you want to do it's one main part of the whole project but the other is sustainable gastronomy and sustainable hospitality and we really thought we want to make our own experiences in that in that field and we also wanted a concrete outlet and and then it was funny then the mayor from Alendral came to us and said well we're developing this great um Prae Fluvial, so it's a beach place here at the Azenis del Rey in Manxuntus. And he said, yeah, well, there's this restaurant and don't you guys want to do something with it? It's a very beautiful space. So probably it would be a good fit. And we're like, OK, it's quite of an operational hassle. And he said, but yeah, we jumped into it. And it was really a great experience. Challenging, of course, and not that easy, but amazing because we really had to get better and learn a lot how to to produce in accordance to a kitchen. and also to find the right people to work with, right? Because it's not usually you're a chef and design your menu and then you just order from macro or you order your stuff from wherever. And here it's different. So you really need to find these kind of chefs and people which are truly in this for real and really believe in this sustainable kind of gastronomy. And they say, no, I'm just cooking with whatever I get from the garden. And then this is also challenging, but very, very interesting.
- Speaker #1
So how much of the food that's being cooked here, the restaurant, comes directly from your farm?
- Speaker #0
So it's 90 percent. We have a reduced menu at Raya, very seasonal, micro seasonal. We change every three, four weeks basically or sometimes two months depending a bit on the season. And yeah, as I said before, what we don't grow in the farm, it won't show up here in the restaurant. And yeah, the other 10 percent of course is the river fish. We work with the local fishermen from here. And he's providing us with an amazing pipe perch from the lake, which is extremely delicious and culinary wise very, very interesting, very underestimated also. And yeah, and the rest is just a very small percentage of, I don't know, rice. and this kind of vinegar which we don't produce yet.
- Speaker #1
Okay, yeah. You were mentioning earlier the fact that this area has been deserted by young people and people in general and you're part of a movement to bring back people to this area and the restaurant is part of that. Could you tell me more about that? Yeah,
- Speaker #0
sure. Because I mean it's a fact for instance when our latest son was born, Raphael, is your same name, the old lady of the village was at you, she started to cry. And she said, wow, it's the first time since four or five years that a baby is born in this area. Of course, it's just old people that stayed behind and the young people just left to the cities. And this is a demographic phenomenon you see everywhere around Europe. And people feel very, how can I say that, left behind here. And sometimes they feel, it's a bit what my impression of the cultural impact here. They feel that, OK, what the people in the government say and the politicians. I don't believe anything anyway, so they stay really closed in their own bubble. And on the other hand, you have these over-populized, really dense centers in the cities where people also sometimes feel like in a hamster wheel because they're just running, running, running. And why are you all doing all that? So there's really a gap of a connection. Where does all the food come from and how can you connect with nature? And what does that do to you? when you connect stronger with nature and that means it can be something very simple like going to the garden picking your own food and and washing your salad and just providing food for yourself and your family or your friends or whoever or just for yourself and it's a very healing and inspiring and nourishing experience yeah yeah and in that sense we realized when we opened the place here. This is a very left-behind area. So the whole desertification part is happening in the soil. It's happening in the country. The soils are getting eroded. This is what we talk about in the farm also. But also the social desertification is a very big phenomenon and a big problem here because you don't have enough workers. You don't have enough young talent. People need to come back here and make this place thrive. Yeah. And that was also something we tried to do. Yeah.
- Speaker #1
Yeah, you're a bit like... a pioneer tree right in a rebuilding ecosystem that is feeding you know the ecosystem that is building it back up so that other plants can come and thrive in that ecosystem right it's like the parallel i have in my head yes of course i mean yeah sure and and sometimes you also realize that these kind of projects they're bigger than yourself and of course first of all this would never be possible without all
- Speaker #0
of these people which are actually bringing their energy in here together. I mean, you guys are also coming here. Something also must have... kind of fascinated you or interested you to come here to visit us and to so we're having this conversation right now so yes people are interested in making a change and now the question is how should that work and yeah it definitely starts through coming together and talking about how we could make it happen actually so
- Speaker #1
now that you've integrated the restaurant as part of your business model and you have food going straight from the farm and to the restaurant Do you also close a cycle with, I don't know, like food scraps and things like that going back to the farm, being composted and so on? Yes,
- Speaker #0
yes, sure we do. First of all, because we think it's super important to get all the products which we have from the farm here. So there's always a small part when we prepare the vegetables, for instance, that goes straight away to the chicken, right? You clean a bit and the first thing, there's always the first selection goes to the animal and stays in the system. But of course, we have the leftovers here from the restaurant, also the coffee leftovers. leftovers. where we have developed a quite complex and interesting, really intriguing, and for me personally, a very fascinating compost system. So on the farm, all the leftovers from the restaurants are coming back and they're reintegrated in the cycle. So they go to the chicken compost and then they got piled from one place to the other and the chickens are doing their part with the worms. And it's a very interesting biomass which we create and it's a neutral, It's a very organic. very incredible soil enricher and it's such a power it's like a superfood for the garden and it's one of our key elements for the market gardens that's incredible so you're um you're organic regenerative circular yes and more or less zero waste i mean yes going towards zero waste that's that's an impressive combination of different uh elements yeah yeah thank you no that was also the reason why we got rewarded with the wakama burmese sustainability prize last year And yeah, I mean, of course, we have to still get to get better. And there's still a lot of optimization to do within the process of what we plant at the farm, how to bring it here, and the whole circle. And I think it's important because if you are feeding people, right, and that is the main objective of a restaurant, you're feeding people, but you also have a responsibility through the planet and the next generation. So you cannot just leave a trash bag. pile of plastic garbage behind.
- Speaker #1
Back at the farm, we catch the sunset over the lake with a glass of wine. And I take this opportunity to ask a few more questions about the business model and some final words before closing this wonderful day and this wonderful experience. I truly hope you enjoyed this episode. If you want to make sure not to miss the next ones coming out, well, don't forget to click on the follow or subscribe button. Thank you so much and see you soon. So in the same way that a really healthy ecosystem is really diverse, would you say that a healthy regenerative business also needs to be very diverse? Is that the reason why you're trying to be so diversified in your business model?
- Speaker #2
No, it's much easier to have a monoculture or an entrepreneurial monoculture than to have these. super diversified business. Of course, if you are diversified, if one thing is not working, the other might work. So you have a better balance. But one thing is to do one thing or two or three or to do 250 like we do. And that's the complex thing because the whole production is a science. The whole transformation of it, it's also a science. The whole chain of value of that market is a science. And then you still have to market it. And if you have 100 products and you have to go through many ways and different kinds of fuels from different kinds of gaps, it becomes very difficult. Plus our price is very high. So if I would advise any regenerative agriculture person that wants to make the change or to come into this business, I would streamline it in one business, I would make it profitable and then bring the next streamline carefully. chosen within their own context. So the possibilities are only depending on the capability of investment, the infrastructure. So this is a dream that can be pretty quickly a nightmare. So you have to prepare yourself. So what I would advise is depending on if you're buying a property or if you have a business, make the change. It makes sense in all aspects. I could enumerate five in ten seconds but To diversify as much as we do is not the best example because it takes a lot of investment. It's very important to make one step after the other and to ask people that already made that path what are the opportunities. But in every sense and means a regenerative operation makes completely sense because you do much less of the work unless you are doing market gardening. and the output is much better. So in that sense it's beautiful. And then you keep on adding complexity if you want. So that's what I would say regarding the economics of the operation. Nevertheless, the potential is immense because as we are putting together agriculture with tourism, as soon as things start working together, they are already working, we already do. very interesting revenue figures as well for such a small operation. But the thing is, as soon as things change and move and it becomes really circular, then the revenue potential is immense.
- Speaker #0
There's this Indian proverb of, we don't inherit the world from our ancestors, we borrow it from our children. And yeah, this is a message that is to all of us. So if each and every one of us takes a small...
- Speaker #1
small moment and and be aware of how we source our food how to make the difference how to inspire you guys are also here you're you're here to spread the message you're inspiring people thank you so much for hosting us here on the farm for a couple of days it's been absolutely beautiful we we loved it the place is beautiful the food is amazing you guys have been incredible hosts so thank you so much for that and thank you for sharing this knowledge with us and with all the listeners and the viewers of the deep seat podcast Thank you.
- Speaker #0
Thank you very much.
- Speaker #2
Thank you.
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