👩🌾 Farmer Support
Activities
Manos Cambiadas
They launched “Manos Cambiadas,” rooted in an old pattern of neighbors helping neighbors. They worked alongside neighbors on farms and with what people needed day to day. The project continues and has mobilized more than 1,200 volunteers as community members rotate labor across farms.
Sustainable Grassland Management
Open habitats cannot be sustained with uniform, industrial mowing. Historically, mosaic grazing and scythe work moved slowly across small parcels—patterns that modern large-field management erases along with specialist species. Bringing animals, shepherds, and patchwise grazing back is central. The team advises and trains farmers on these methods. Reception has shifted from scepticism to curiosity: neighbours now seek them out, reporting clear gains in visible biodiversity.
Farm Infrastructure Support Initiative
Targeted grants fund practical upgrades—stone walls, feeding systems, water management—that lift environmental scores and make day-to-day farming easier. The logic matches the results model: invest where it shifts outcomes, not where it merely ticks boxes.
Regenerative Agriculture Machinery Bank
To practice regenerative agriculture, specific machinery is needed, and not all farmers can afford the full range of machines required. Farmers in the area decided to create a community machinery bank, sharing equipment among members. The bank now counts 61 members, demonstrating how resource sharing enables broader adoption of regenerative practices. The cooperative combines equipment access with collaborative learning. They have developed a network for shared farming tips ("truquillos")—those little secrets that farmers share with each other when they have trust and complicity. This approach recognizes that knowledge sharing is as important as resource sharing in building a regenerative agricultural movement.
Regenerative Agriculture Transition
One of the initial goals has been to help align stakeholders and shift from the development of almond monocultures and intensive agricultural and livestock farming practices to mainstreaming regenerative practices and developing the regional market for them. More than 100,000 hectares of rain-fed almonds grow in the AlVelAl Territory, creating huge potential for business-driven restoration. Regenerative techniques are known and work, but cultural adoption is a long-term process requiring patient support and demonstration of both ecological and economic benefits. The alliance backs the transition with education and training, farm-level assessments for farms that want to change practices, research and monitoring to document what works, demonstration farms that show regenerative management in real conditions, and early-transition support so farmers can absorb risk in the first years of change.