Raquel García Rodríguez, farmer in the Labrecos cooperative – Dordaño, Oza-Cesuras, A Coruña

Raquel is part of Labrecos, a worker cooperative located in the municipality of Oza-Cesuras, in the province of A Coruña, which combines organic agriculture (with and without greenhouses) and livestock farming with a regenerative and circular approach. It is a family cooperative in which she works with her partner and brother-in-law and is supported by her mother-in-law. They share a common vision: to regenerate the land and produce quality food without relying on external means of production.

They started with only vegetable gardens but introduced animals not only to complement the sale of meat products but also for their contribution to the organic fertilisation of the garden soil and the regenerative grazing of their farms. This approach puts caring for the land at the centre and aims to demonstrate that it is possible to achieve high yields without resorting to conventional practices, she says. ‘Cabbages can reach the same weight and carrots the same yield as in conventional farming, as long as you take good care of the land’.

Raquel says that many of today’s farming practices have abandoned soil care in favour of immediate productivity, but she is convinced that the regenerative model is just as efficient and more sustainable. ‘The myth that organic farming is expensive or less productive is unfounded,’ she says, criticising the dependence on external inputs such as chemicals and fertilisers in conventional farming. For her, opting for regenerative methods is not only a question of production, but also of respecting nature and the seasonality of consumption.

Despite her innovative and circular approach, Raquel acknowledges that the path has not been easy due to bureaucratic hurdles, which only seem to contemplate specialised models. ‘When you have a vegetable garden, cows and sheep, they seem to go crazy with the paperwork,’ she says. This lack of flexibility to support integrated models hinders the work of small farms like Labrecos, which are looking for a sustainable way of producing while taking care of the environment. In addition to the lack of aid, Raquel denounces external threats caused by wind and cellulose macro-industries, which put the rural environment and production projects such as hers, which respect the natural environment, at risk. ‘The defence of the countryside is our greatest struggle at the moment,’ she says.

‘Seeing how the plants grow, how well the harvests come out and bringing products to customers that surprise them is a gratification that no other type of work gives us’, she explains. This project is not just a job for Raquel, but a way of life that has transformed her daily life in search of higher quality and in which she has involved her children (food, knowledge of biological diversity, values, etc.). She also seeks to raise her customers’ awareness of local, quality consumption, determined by the seasonal nature of the products.

Raquel joined the cooperative little by little. She used to work as a receptionist in a car workshop, and it was her partner and brother-in-law who were already producing organically. She says that ‘in 2012, when I had my first child, I asked for breastfeeding leave, but the company told me that it was not possible to take the fifteen days. When you are breastfeeding, an hour off a day is not worth anything. In the end, I continued in that job, but after I had my second child I decided I didn’t want that life. I didn’t want a life where I didn’t see them and they had to be looked after by other people because I left the house at 8.30 in the morning, came back at midday for lunch, with the children napping, and returned at 8 pm or later if there were meetings’.

Looking back, Raquel says she never imagined that farming would be her path. ‘There were always cows in my house, but my contact with agriculture was minimal, I always tried to stay away. In many places, people think that if you study and work outside, you are somebody. If you stay in the countryside, it seems that you are nobody, that you have no status. They told you “go away, girl, go away, the countryside has no future”. But I think that the countryside has a great future and it is a life project that I would like my children to value and, if they want, to follow’.