Return to the Source
In Ibiza, a new breed of contemporary agriculturalist is reviving the island’s rural fortunes, bringing passion, power and purpose back to the land while reframing the future of farming. L'OFFICIEL IBIZA's Maya Boyd shines a spotlight on the inspirational individuals for whom community and commitment are key to restoring Ibiza's rural heartlands.
The late afternoon sun casts its apricot-hued half-light through fields of swaying wildflowers, sending deep shadows shuddering across Ibiza’s ancient drystone bancales. Turtle doves coo softly in the rustling almond trees, the last of the lemons sway from heavy branches and migrating swifts dip and dart, snapping up the cicadas that sizzle like hot fat beneath swathes of wild fennel. The island appears to fizz with life. But below ground is a different story, where climate change, cultural transition and outdated farming practices have decimated Ibiza’s agricultural land, leaving dry, desiccated earth to be scattered by the wind and swept away by the rain. In the island’s vivid north, however, where innovators have gathered for decades, the rumble of change can be felt as communities unite to revive the parched landscapes.
‘We need a return to the way things were done here 100 years ago,’ declares Alonso Colmenares, the wild-haired and charismatic Madrileño who is co-founder of the Ibiza-based regenerative agriculture farm design consultancy The Farmers Club. ‘Our mission is very simple: to regenerate the soil and integrate the systems that can make Ibiza abundant again. Everybody is concerned about climate change. Everybody is concerned about water. But when you go deep into that, it all comes back to the soil. Soil is Ibiza’s hottest topic. On an island where infinity pools and helipads were once the crème-de-la-currency and oligarchs battled over superyacht berths, Ibiza’s red earth has become the new frontline.
Healthy soil is the foundational stone of regenerative agriculture, a system that prioritises farming in harmony with nature to rebuild soil’s organic matter and restore degraded biodiversity, resulting in carbon drawdown and an improved water cycle. In short, elevating soil health is the single most important way in which humans can mitigate climate disaster. Globally, industrialised agriculture and the introduction of pesticides and fertilisers to support intensive monocrops are largely to blame for the mass degradation of soil. Ibiza, on a much smaller scale, has its own issues. Yearly tilling of the land, while often cited as a solution to the control of the invasive, non-native pine forests, repeatedly disrupts the soil’s natural microbiome, leaching nutrients and leaving earth exposed and unable to absorb rainwater or support crops. In tandem, weaker markets for local export crops such as almonds and carob have left farming economically unviable, while a cultural shift away from rural life has left large tracts of land untended. But just how do you integrate widespread change on an island with thousands of years of farming history?
Colmenares, a biologist by training and publicist in a parallel life, has had a home on the island for 27 years and is aware of the potentially shifting sands that lie between foreign ‘new entrant’ farmers and their local counterparts. ‘We must be respectful [to all farmers] and integrate changes slowly, offering economically viable alternatives along the way,’ he says. ‘Everybody understands that the natural way is best for the planet. But people are also trying to feed their children.’ The Farmers Club, created by Colmenares alongside permaculture expert Josean Oyaga (‘Josean is the real deal,’ says Colmenares. ‘The one who can really listen to the land.’) is a one-stop shop to design, create and manage farms for clients across the island. They handle all aspects, from designing the layout and preparing the land to seeding, staffing and even the production of microorganism fertilisers in their own laboratory near San Rafael. ‘It is a very involved process,’ says Colmenares. ‘We need to understand the seasons, the science, the moon. We need to be absolutely in tune with everything.’
But just how can large-scale farming projects get off the ground? Giancarlo Canavesio, an Ibiza-based former NYC banker-turned-farmer and documentary maker, believes a model known as 'patient capitalism' could be the key. ‘It’s a concept that sits at the intersection of philanthropy, conscious business and conscious entrepreneurship. The patient capitalist donates the fund capital, but retains a percentage of the revenues, therefore retaining an interest in the venture moving forward.’ On an island where deep pockets and empathy abound in equal measures, it's a promising concept. 'It would be great to see farms report to investors not only on profit, but also on the environmental gain of their investment. They could be publishing quantitative and qualitative ratio information regarding soil health and carbon sequestration. The measure of success in the regenerative farming industry is not just the bottom line, but the pro-social impact. Projects ought to be judged in terms of how much they restore the environment.’ Canavesio is evangelical about the potential of widescale adoption of regenerative agriculture in Ibiza, pointing out the ‘good news’ that while much of the planet’s degraded farmland is essentially dead due to chemical use, in Ibiza, fields have never been industrially sprayed. ‘They are just sleeping, ready to be revived. They’ve been taking a long siesta,’ he laughs. He also points out that Ibiza is primed to become a paradigm for the visible, local effects of regeneration. ‘The island covers 570 square kilometres. If the community could regenerate just one third of that we could implement local climate change. We could make the island more temperate and see an end to 40-degree summers and forest fires.’
Many regenerative farms on the island have made use of Ibiza’s Land Bank, which connects would-be farmers with the owners of unused land. This rapidly growing model neatly sidesteps the financial hurdle of accessing land, meaning that small-scale farmers are supported, too. And in Ibiza, small means diverse, allowing niche herb growers, heritage grain crops and organic micro-crops to flourish. Colmenares’ wife, the Chilean florist Francesca Munizaga, grows flowers on a bijou half-hectare plot at the couple’s home near San Mateo. Having noticed that almost all her local florist’s blooms were imported from Holland and even Colombia, Munizaga decided to grow her own. She now creates vast, unstructured, painterly floral displays of ranunculus, mimosa, cosmos and sweet pea for events for Loewe and dinners for Gucci – the latter hosted in the couple’s own free-form south-facing garden at the golden hour.
This reframing of farming as a contemporary, cultural celebration in Ibiza has largely been pioneered by Swedish conscious investor Christian Jochnick, who is currently spearheading the reinvention of an abandoned dairy farm near the thrumming and cosmopolitan town of Santa Gertrudis. Juntos Farm will be a community space and cultural destination, hosting workshops, cooking classes and farm-to-table dinners, along with a Saturday tasting night with live music and a Sunday food market. The Juntos journey began with Jochnick’s family move in 2018 to revive an ancient finca and its surrounding land. The experience catalysed a personal transformation. ‘I went on something of a spiritual quest and began to realise to what extent we as humans had distanced ourselves from nature,’ he says. ‘Nature is not an object. It is a system that we belong to. Plants and trees have families, they have relatives, they have children, they communicate with each other to the root system. They’re connected through mycelium. When one gets sick, the others start channelling nutrients to it. Nature is a far superior technology to human technology.’
It’s an ethic shared by Youri Post, a former philosophy student and social activist, who, along with business partner Dean Xavier, runs Can Cristofol, a historic social hub and grocery store in the Morna Valley that the duo have restored to its former glory. ‘Ninety per cent of our intention goes into the soil and the rest just follows,’ he explains. ‘People talk about soil regeneration, and yet many people are too attached to the idea of what happens above the ground. I say to people, “Dig deeper.” When we do, we start to become aware of all life’s relationships. The problems we face in agriculture stem from the same separative mentality that impacts all kinds of social and economic injustice in the world and redressing this is key.’
Can Cristofol has begun to host talks and social evenings, breathing life back into the long-forgotten finca’s ancient courtyard. ‘We want to keep this place soulful and humble,’ says Xavier. ‘What we’re trying to do is to create connection, restore relationships, restore vitality – both in the soil and the community – and that for me is our calling.’
Central to all the regenerative farmers in Ibiza is the idea that we must gather together to restore equilibrium, both in Ibiza and the wider world. At Tierra Iris, an association of permaculture near San Antonio, the members spend time connecting with the land, learning new skills and forging bonds. Italian-born Tierra Iris founder Mathia Milani worked in real estate before his life took an abrupt turn during the pandemic. ‘I was in Mexico. I lost everything,’ he says. ‘I went deeply into my meditation and yoga practice and consciousness for five months. And while I was losing everything that I had created over the previous eight years, my soul became happier and lighter. I realised that this life was no longer my path. I had to figure out my journey again.’ Having studied permaculture in Mexico, Milani became particularly taken with the strand known as syntropic farming, pioneered by Ernst Götsch, the presiding principle of which is collaboration. He explains, ‘The idea of syntropic forests is that you need to find harmony, to make sure that the plants are sharing unconditional love, which is largely the opposite of what’s happening in our culture. I believe that regeneration of the soil is very much related to the regeneration of our soul and our relationships. It is a way to understand how we should live and how we should interact.’ Milani launched Tierra Iris in Ibiza – ‘the island where I took my first steps’ – and has rapidly integrated the farm, its philosophy and its grounds, which include a natural amphitheatre surrounded by cliffs, deep within the island’s creative and spiritual scene.
The finca hosts community picnics and pachamanca (a type of Peruvian ground cooking) feasts, while workshops in regenerative practices, music and arts gatherings also take place. ‘Tierra Iris is not a place where we are solely focused on food production,’ muses Milani. ‘This is a place where we can begin to try and remember the process of living and working and celebrating together as a community. We are a collective experiment, honouring nature at the heart of all we do.’
