He can’t put his finger on the reason, but Joan Prat (Calaf, 1977) has always wanted to be a farmer. Family tradition and the farming tasks he carried out when he was growing up must have had something to do with it. His father had been growing cereals for a long time and Joan would help him out in the fields. One fine day, Joan met Fàtima Brunet (Fonollosa, 1980) and together they began to introduce changes to the project. The couple, who now have two children, began the switch to organic farming, growing pulses and researching how to market their own produce.

Fruits del Secà was founded in 2011, although Joan had already been working as a professional farmer since the 1990s. They grow organic cereals, pulses and seeds, which are certified by the Catalan Council for Organic Agricultural Production (CCPAE). They also have a gristmill for making flour with the ancient wheat varieties they grow. The pulses they sell are chickpeas from Alta Anoia, brown lentils and red lentils. With the help of a worker, they farm 200 hectares, half of them organically. They distribute their products in school canteens and shops, as well as in bulk through a few distributors. Despite the challenges and obstacles they’ve had to overcome in this transitional process, Joan and Fàtima are proud of the direction in which they’ve taken their project and are now pursuing another dream: opening an organic pig farm.

It strikes you when chatting to this spirited couple that being together has made them better people. Joan’s a farmer and plays the guitar, while Fàtima is an IT professional who dreams of a better world. The result is a family organic farming business that innovates in processes and strives for self-sufficiency and diversification with the goal of meeting consumers’ needs.

Fruits del Secà was set up in an area of the Barcelona region which has plenty of farmers but which does not stand out in terms of its adoption of organic farming practices. How did the project come about?

Joan Prat (J): I began farming professionally in 1999, managing about 100 hectares. In around 2008, I met Fàtima, who by then was already eating organic products. She came from the Manresa area, where there were already consumer cooperatives and a more widespread culture of organic farming. But, at that time, it was all a mystery to us in Sant Pere Sallavinera, where there was still no link road to the Transversal Axis (C-25 highway), which meant that a trip to Manresa took up almost an entire day! She was the one who introduced me to organic farming when she saw that not only was I using herbicides but also that they weren’t working. We decided to enrol at the Manresa Agricultural School, a leading centre in this field, and completed a couple of courses there: one on organic crops and one on biodynamic agriculture. The training had a deep impact on us. After absorbing everything we learned there, we created our first hectare of organic crops in 2009.

Fàtima Brunet (F): We planted organic chickpeas from Alta Anoia on that hectare and, since it didn’t go badly, the following year we converted another five or six hectares. Joan began to change his approach to working the land, while I, with my telecommunications degree, continued to work in IT at the Polytechnic University of Catalonia in Manresa until just a year and a half ago.

J: As time went on, we expanded our acreage and research, and in the third year we tried growing ancient wheat varieties and started looking for new customers. In 2013 we decided to set up a private partnership to consolidate the project. We created the “Fruits del Secà” brand, which is registered with the legal and health authorities, and then we started contacting school canteens to sell them pulses.

The two of you getting together facilitated a process of change on the land. How did you meet?

F: We met in Fonollosa, my village. I’d seen Joan around, because a lad I knew played in a band with him. One evening, at a birthday party, we got chatting and that’s where it all began. Now we’ve got two children: a boy and a girl.

Joan, you come from farming stock but the land you farm now didn’t belong to your parents. How did you come by it? Getting access to land is always the main obstacle to becoming a farmer.

J: My parents come from a village in the Solsonès area. But my father was the cabaler, the second-born son, so he wasn’t entitled to any land. That’s why he moved to Calaf to work in a factory. But both during his lunch break and after clocking off at 7 pm, he’d go and tend to his pigs. When there were no direct relatives who wanted to work the land of the Cal Torra farm, my father, who was a second cousin, was asked if he’d like to take over the reins, and he accepted. I was 14 years old at the time and wanted to be a farmer, so everything came together perfectly.

Why have you always wanted to be a farmer?

J: I couldn’t tell you why. I grew up with it, in my own house and in my grandparents’ house. Before he took up his job at the factory, my father had worked in a small abattoir, so on the weekends he’d be slaughtering pigs on local farms: four pigs on Saturday afternoon and two more on Sunday morning. And I’d be in tow! We’d get going at five in the morning and be back home at lunchtime. It’s hard to explain, but I enjoyed it. I like music a lot as well, but earning a living as a musician out in the country in the 1980s was extremely difficult… My dad was a workaholic and didn’t want me to pursue a career in music or the arts. In fact, we had some pretty heated arguments on the matter. Fàtima is more keen on the bucolic aspect of heading into the mountains on a Sunday, whereas I prefer going out into the fields to see how the crops are doing. She says that spring is the only time of year when she can persuade me to go for a bike ride to see what state the fields are in. She says she can’t budge me in the winter.

«my father had worked in a small abattoir, so on the weekends he’d be slaughtering pigs on local farms: four pigs on Saturday afternoon and two more on Sunday morning. And I’d be in tow! We’d get going at five in the morning and be back home at lunchtime. It’s hard to explain, but I enjoyed it» Joan Prat
 

Fàtima, you’re not from farming stock. Where did you get the itch for organic farming?

F: I’ve always been a committed activist and I’ve travelled a fair bit. For instance, I went to Nicaragua with the NGO Setem. Listening to talks by the economist and activist Arcadi Oliveres back in the day, I realised that the planet wasn’t in good shape, that we were destroying it. It was a time of strong mobilisation against GMOs. I understood that we had to reduce the use of chemicals, which were polluting our water, and eat less meat. Meanwhile, I’d joined the consumer cooperative El Rostoll Verd in Manresa, where I would put in a few hours’ work and shop directly from organic producers. This meant that the price of my shopping basket didn’t go up too much.

From IT professional to farmer, that’s quite a life change! What do you like most about your new profession?

F: I studied telecommunications because I’ve always been into science, but I’ve always had a bug for the social side of things too: I was a monitor for kids’ activities. I’m not the typical IT person who spends the whole day in front of a computer; I like nature, bike rides… So you can see I’m not a nerd. Ha, ha ha!

I met Joan and we began the shift towards organic farming, which I found very stimulating. At the same time, I enjoyed helping him with the marketing side of things. There wasn’t much I could do out in the fields, where he was the expert. I’ve never driven the tractor, I’ve never learned how. Instead, I designed the website, did the paperwork for the food production facility... I saw that I had a contribution to make. If it had been a conventional farming project, using chemicals, I’d still be working in IT. We’d be together, but I’d be doing something else and he’d be the farmer. The way things are organised now, I like mucking in and enrolling on courses at the agricultural school to learn stuff, among other things.

«If it had been a conventional farming project, using chemicals, I’d still be working in IT. We’d be together, but I’d be doing something else» Fàtima Brunet
 

Then came motherhood and raising kids, another full-time job.

F: When our son was born, I was still working part-time at the UPC, but I often had to leave work to take care of him, and when I had to do paperwork for the CCPAE (the Catalan Council for Organic Agricultural Production), I had to ask for the day off. Then, when my daughter was born, I realised it was all a bit much: the kids take up a lot of time. So I took a leave of absence from the UPC. Now I manage Fruits del Secà and the truth is I enjoy the work. It’s a little scary putting all your eggs in one basket, especially in the farming sector, where you’re dependent on the weather, droughts, the harvest... But we want to give it a go. If in five years’ time, when the kids are a bit older, it becomes clear that we can’t both make a living from the project, I’ll look for work elsewhere again.

As innovative farmers, you must have done a lot of research to get your products to market. Could you tell us what sales methods you’ve used? What’s been your strategy for finding new customers? Have you had to overcome many obstacles in terms of marketing?

J: In 2014 we did a course on small food production facilities at the Agricultural School of Tàrrega and learned how to turn a small space we had on the farm into a production facility. It wasn’t easy at first. All the requirements were new to us, but over time we’ve proved that we’re capable of meeting them.

F: Before we started marketing our products ourselves, a cereal distributor would come and take the harvested crops away and we didn’t have to clean them. But if you harvest chickpeas, for example, they’re full of ladybirds, snails and grasses, so we’ve had to learn how to clean them. Over the last three years, we’ve invested in machines to clean our harvested crops, in order to be able to take them to the food production facility we have on the farm. If there’s a problem with the crops, we sort it out or just eat them ourselves. Now we do everything ourselves.

You work without intermediaries, which is a strategy adopted by many small and medium-sized farming businesses.

J: That’s right. Profit margins are extremely tight and finding someone who does a good job is tricky as well.

F: The lentils would be returned to us with stones among them! A curious anecdote is that in the early years, in the evenings, with the help of a little light, we’d check the lentils by hand. It’s enough to drive you mad! So we realised we had to invest in machines.

J: Those evenings made our relationship stronger. Ha, ha, ha!

F: We were able to establish a customer base for our chickpeas, but you can’t do that with wheat unless you make flour. That’s why after visiting Josep Bové of Cal Pauet, a leading light in the sector, we purchased a gristmill. When we’d take the old wheat varieties we grow to the flour mills, we’d be told that they fell outside the standard parameters usually required for quality, protein and elasticity. Having our own gristmill allows us to make our own flour.

In other words, they’re non-standard flours but they’re actually healthier, right?

J:. Yes, consumers are becoming aware of this now and understand that old wheat varieties are easier to digest. But we must admit that we discovered all this later on. The initial reason for choosing these varieties was because they suited us in terms of growing. Then we realised they were healthier. For example, my father ate plenty of rye in the post-war period, but farmers stopped growing it because at that time demand switched to white flour, the more refined the better.

F: People with food intolerances have been discovering these ancient cereal varieties, but most consumers still don’t know about them.

According to data compiled by BCN Smart Rural, 48% of the crops in the Barcelona region are cereals, but only a tiny percentage of farms, just 3%, practice organic farming.

F: That’s true. There are plenty of farmers who grow cereal, but not through organic farming.

J: The current system takes them down that road, getting into debt to buy a 200-horsepower tractor, a farm with 5,000 pigs, etc. But we decided to pause and do things differently. We started out with a minimal investment and now we own four machines that we didn’t even know existed!

F: Older people don’t make the switch to organic farming or start doing their own marketing because it requires a lot of motivation and hard work. Meanwhile, young farmers prefer to carry on doing things the usual way because it is easier. If you want to make the transition, it’s because of strong environmental convictions or other important reasons. People who aren’t from farming stock who want to get into organic farming usually start with a vegetable garden, since it requires less acreage and the machinery is more affordable. Getting access to land for growing cereals, pulses and other dryland crops is virtually impossible.

In the counties of Barcelona, several initiatives are being implemented to foster generational renewal, such as land banks and agricultural business incubators, along with other initiatives promoted by private institutions and associations. What do you think of initiatives of this sort?

F: Land banks can be useful for landowning farmers who want to retire and transfer the land to new farmers. In France, for example, they have the Terre de Liens initiative, which is similar to the land banks here.

J: Direct financial aid and marketing assistance should be made available to aspiring young farmers who are starting from scratch in order to help them balance the books. If their access to land is facilitated but then they grow a product they can’t sell, that’s no good. Another essential measure is for local councils to set up small food production facilities where young people can prepare their food products.

F: What’s more, the paperwork for creating shared food production facilities is complicated. You need to be able to handle community management tasks.

«Direct financial aid and marketing assistance should be made available to aspiring young farmers who are starting from scratch in order to help them balance the books» Joan Prat
 

The BCN Smart Rural Data Bites, entitled Artisanal Territory, analysed the number and type of collective agrifood processing facilities in the counties of Barcelona. Do you think there are enough of them in the area or should more be provided?

J: I’d like Barcelona Provincial Council and other public bodies to put pressure on local councils to bring the legislation on food production facilities into line with the needs of small and medium-sized agrifood projects, because we’re not exactly Danone here. It goes without saying that you have to comply with the proper parameters, but the regulations should flexible, adapted to the size of the company. These policies are crucial for getting people to stay in the local area and grow their businesses. It would be great if they could make things easier and help out those who are unfamiliar with the legislation. Because it feels like the message they’re conveying to us right now is: “Get on with it yourself, and then we’ll come along and see how you did.”

When it comes to generational renewal, a strong prevalence of men can be observed among retiring farmers, since farms have traditionally been run more by men than by women.

J: Changing roles is a tricky business. When I told my father that I planned to farm part of the land organically the following year, he took it badly, telling my mother we were trying to expropriate a piece of land. He likes going to Calaf market and chatting to the other farmers about when to spray crops, for example. Switching roles is extremely complicated. We used to clash a lot, but not so much nowadays.

F: He cheered up when he realised we were managing to sell what we grew…

His generation of farmers benefitted from the “Green Revolution”, the process that began in the 1960s whereby technological developments led to a huge increase in agricultural production and crop yields. But they haven’t often had to deal with the many negative impacts associated with this process.

F: The land they farmed produced very little until they started using herbicides and fertilizers. Since crop yields became so much bigger, most farmers adopted these practices, because they were viewed positively at that time. Only a handful of purists decided not to get on the bandwagon. It’s difficult now to tell them to turn back the clock, to stop using these substances and return to a more natural way of farming, since this entails, on the one hand, smaller harvests, and, on the other hand, higher prices. They don’t understand and wonder how they’re going to be able to sell their products for higher prices in today’s world. I understand Joan’s father. If our son ever tells us he wants to become a farmer and go back to farming with chemicals, I’ll be the first person to tell him not to. And we may have a fight on our hands with this issue.

J: One of the reasons why we implemented our transition towards organic farming gradually was because we wanted people to be able to assimilate the changes.

You live and work in an area with a strong farming culture. But there’s also more pressure and scrutiny than in other areas with fewer farmers. How does this tension affect you in your day-to-day work?

F: There are lots of famers in these parts and people are always on your back!

J: It’s true. There are lots of people at the Saturday market and it all comes out… Sometimes only the negative aspects of your activity are brought up, while no one ever says anything when things go right.

The book 'Terra d'aprenentges (Land of learning)' features organic farming projects in which educational or demonstration activities have been incorporated on farms in order to compensate the low hourly rate of pay in the primary sector. Do you think you get a fair price for your products?

F: We give our products their real price, while others price theirs too low. Take pork prices, for example. With the amount of environmental waste generated by the industry and the consequences this entails for our health, prices should be higher. It can only be sold at this price because farmers are subsidised through the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) or other funding mechanisms. Conversely, when you farm organically and wish to earn a living, the price is different: it’s the real price.

J: If we manage to sell our products at the real price, it’s because we’ve been able to reach the end customer. If we’d opted for the other system, selling our products through Carrefour or some other intermediary, we’d have been fleeced. We didn’t want that.

F: Exactly. There are also organic farmers who are being exploited and distributors who are getting rich off them.

«We give our products their real price, while others price theirs too low» Fàtima Brunet
 

What are your strategies for tackling challenges related to drought management, water access and climate change?

J: Climate change will have a pretty big impact on us in this part of the world. The last two springs have been really bad.

F: Our next step is to adopt regenerative agriculture practices. As things stand, we plough the land to remove weeds and leave the soil bare for many weeks of the year, so when it rains there’s erosion. We have to able to keep the ground surface covered for most of the year. Over the next five years, we aim to incorporate regenerative agriculture practices on part of our land.

Do you have any exciting new projects at Fruits del Secà?

J: We currently have 163 fattening pigs in the conventional and integrated system here on the farm, but we’re going to make the switch to an organic, closed system with just twenty sows. The idea is to distribute the meat ourselves.

F: To begin with, we’ll get someone to process our meat, in order to be able to diversify our income sources. But the pigs will eat from the land here, so we’ll continue to depend on the same place. Another advantage of going organic is that we’ll have natural fertiliser, since we currently buy our compost off the Vic Plain Cooperative. It holds the organic seal, but it’s expensive and has to be brought here by trailer.

J: We’d like to open up the farm and invite people in to find out about the project. The conventional system is basically a closed one, whereas we want the organic pig farm to be open as possible, so we’ll organise visits to show people that things can be done differently.

F: We’ll even introduce formal fees for visits. Schools visit us on the farm now, but on a more informal basis.

To wrap things up, what is a good life for you?

J: A good life is pretty much the one we have. We all have to work, of course, but ideally it should be in something you really love. If on top of that you have a family and enjoy good health, that’s what it’s about!

F: I agree with what Joan says: it’s not easy to have a good life in a job that you only do for the money. It’s really important to work in something enjoyable and fulfilling, because you’re going to be putting lots of hours into it. For the life I lead at the moment to be a good life, I’d need a bit more time for myself. I’d like to be able to get away from it all from time to time, to be able to say: “Now I’m going for a walk or I’m going to my child’s party with no other distractions.” It’s an aspect I need to work on.

J: My idea is to have someone to lend us a hand in order to be able to switch off for a bit.

F: That’s why we feel under pressure to make this project work: if we could take someone else on, we’d reduce our workload.

— BCN Smart Rural Editorial —