Organic farming in the Cuenca del Tajo

Ecos del Tajo Project: Organic agriculture and sustainable development model in the Tagus basin, originates from the hand of the Local Action Groups, thanks to funding through the Ministry of Environment, Rural and Marine Environment, open through projects of territorial and transnational cooperation within the framework of the National Rural Network for Local Action Groups (ARM/1287/2009 order of 8 May).

Organic agriculture and sustainable development model in the Tagus basin

The objective of this integrated system is to secure partnerships, disseminate experiences and form a common scenario for the consolidation of rural Spain. And the Local Action Groups, as direct agents and managers of rural development programs spread across the geography of Europe, are the appropriate entities to achieve this goal.

Local Action Groups bring to the project Ecos del Tajo two of its most basic realities, the agricultural sector and territory. All counties have agriculture, looking for quality alternatives and take very seriously the environmental aspects. If you add that such pressing problems the sector, the groups we are keen to connect to networks that help us find solutions from the cooperation. So we have an industry and a territory, we want to connect to the same objective: The development of organic farming.

Ecos del Tajo project was created with the intention to disclose the concept of international Tagus basin and the benefits that organic farming makes to the basin. With this project we propose the idea of using the "watershed" or "River Catchment" model as a tool to break down barriers between Spain and Portugal and flow with the river Tajo / Tejo as spokesman of ecosystems and shared water courses. Promoting interaction between agro-ecological production and the Tagus basin shows clearly the services it provides in terms of organic farming, environmental, social and economic.

The overall objective of this project is to raise awareness and disseminate the concept of international Tagus basin and the benefits that organic farming contributes to the watershed, provide training to farmers and create marketing networks among organic farmers.

Local Action Groups participating in the cooperation project Ecos del Tajo are:

• ASSIGN CAPARRA. Caparra Association for the Development of County Trasierra – Tierras de Granadilla (Cáceres)
• ADESVAL. Valley Development Association of Alagón (Cáceres)
• TAGUS. Development Association of the region of Tagus – Salor – Almonte (Cáceres)
• ADISMONTA. Association for Comprehensive Development and Tamuja Montanchez Sierra (Cáceres)
• ARJABOR. Association for the Development of the Region of Camp Arañuelo (Cáceres)
• Madrid WEST SIERRA CONSORTIUM
• Rural Development Association Molina de Aragón – Alto Tajo (Guadalajara)

The project sources

The project was created with the intention of joining efforts, ideas and people tributaries converge, so that people bathed in the river Tagus to benefit from rural development and economy capable of creating landscape setting and encouraging people with a more agro-ecological tools and healthy future.

It is also an engine for rural development that opts for the conservation of the environment. In this context organic farming reflects the spirit and letter of the new Rural Development Law and international commitments in the Kyoto Protocol and the Lisbon and Gothenburg on the improvement of competitiveness, job creation, sustainability environmental, economic and social development in the countryside.

Every source has a cause

Other aspects are the numerous parks that passes, turning the river into a shifting mosaic of biodiversity reserves.

Ecos del Tajo want to bet on a shared river, linking language, creating a network that flows between the regions, producers, social agents and consumers by promoting an economy that generates wealth and landscape, food and environmental health. And enabling the inhabitants of the districts, aware that agriculture and livestock production is becoming an emerging economy with a solid future, consumer trends and demands of new social and political pacts.

The tributaries that feed it and give it meaning

Ecos del Tajo has three tributaries, three realities should be aware that to promote a realistic and effective action:

• The tributary of economic resources. In this sense agro-ecology offers a combined system of production, handling, distribution and consumption increasingly defendant and a very attractive basin for exploitation.
• The tributary intangible whence the language and culture. In the Tagus basin Portuguese and Spanish converge and a long string of cities, towns and agricultural areas and wildlife, creating a major cultural tissue. An ecological conception of the economy contributes to society awareness, respect and a vital health notion that our societies urgently require developed as the river needs water projects need support.
• Finally there is the tributary of the living, the river that gives sustenance and shelter for flora and fauna. Any development effort must be made with nature as a partner and this is at the heart of agriculture, which calls itself green.

For your flow should be active partners add up along its route. The main areas where the project will intervene are:

• Cataloging systems and assessing their conservation status
• Actions to raise awareness of producers and consumers
• Study models of efficiency in water management, soil and carbon cycles.
• Implement models for verifying the effectiveness of organic farming over conventional
• Training on organic agriculture and livestock producers
• Create a network of Ecological Producers of the Tajo Basin
• Study for the creation of a social license "organic production in the basin of the Tagus"
• Promote the marketing and consumption in ecological, promoting local consumption

The course

The methodology of work will use the tools of citizen participation. The purpose of this method is to achieve social implication of the concept of Cuenca in different rural regions and create the cultural, environmental and economic consequences for agriculture and livestock production and its benefits are a growing reality.

Internal Communication

It involves the coordination of resources and needs among professional actors and consumers.

• Work with farmers includes counseling, training in production and marketing techniques or manipulation.
• It is anticipated visits to farms and other outreach tools such as networking among organic producers.
• It will propose the creation of a micro-logistic of product distribution in the basin, creating a producer-consumer site, set a price auction and encourage local consumption, production Km 0.

External Communication

This action seeks to create the idea of shared watercourses.

• This manual will be published bilingual billboards, brochures, photo contest over the basin and other informative materials to assist this goal.
• Implementation of a specific project for recovery of native seeds in the basin.

Make river, make way

All these lines of work will form a comprehensive plan for the Tagus basin, once the results are shaping up and with this road map, which will give continuity to the project. The work, evaluation of the entire project will result in a navigation map for the future.

Mouth

Tangible results can be used:

• Creating social and administrative networks that share the vision of improving the quality of the Tagus and rural development in its watershed.
• Creating of a support network and exchange for organic farmers, distributors, handlers and consumers.
• Developing and implementation of consumer programs in centers run by the administration, combining healthy eating and ecological awareness.
• Making events both professional and consumer markets that contribute to the objectives of the program.
• Transforming Basin bioregional idea into a brand.
• Favoring exchanges Spain / Portugal.
• Visualizing greater consumption of local products.
• Summing training and creating new sources of employment.

Intangible Expected Results

• Basin as a key idea to break socio-political barriers.
• Culture associated environment and sustainable consumption and good practice.
• Major sense of shared responsibility with the territory.
• Social participation in the collective goal of sustainability and the challenges that demand our techno-scientific world.

The project is open to all types of partners in both Portugal and Spain: Farmers, without amino-profit associations, local action groups, town halls, Concierge, Private, etc.

The types of collaboration are limitless, but in principle we are 5 types of collaboration:

• Involvement of new local action groups, with special interest to those located in Portugal, Toledo and the upper watershed.
• Exchange of technical and resources with nonprofit associations with offices and activities in the basin of the Tajo / Tejo.
• Institutional support of the administrations and gives space for your event.
• Exchange of information and data regarding the project, particularly data related to the ecosystems of the basin, the formation of landscapes and agricultural data for regions bordered by the basin.
• Direct collaboration with universities in conducting studies dealing with agro-ecology, natural resources, training and maintenance of agricultural landscapes and cultures in the basin.

Collaborators

At this point the project has the following partners:

• Project / association Tagus Universalis
• Fundación Global Nature
• Zoological Society Plasencia
• Asociación Amigos do Tejo
• Quercus – Associação Nacional de Conservação da Natureza
• Portugal · Forest Stewardship Council (WWF)
• Ayuntamiento de Plasencia
• Educatierra
• City of Arroyo de la Luz
• Carcaboso City Council
• The rural development group Molina de Aragón – Alto Tajo
• The local action group 'Sierra Oeste de Madrid'
• The local action group 'TAGUS'
• Association for the development of the Sierra de Montánchez and Tamuja
• Development Arañuelo Association de la Jara and Ibores
• Association Caparra development
• Association landscape, ecology and gender

Contact

To contact the project, call the numbers listed or follow the links.

Administrative Office:
 GIVE CAPARRA
 Pza the Town
 10,712 Gabriel y Galán reservoir
 Keramzite Granadilla, Caceres

Technical Office:
 RED CALEA, SL
 Dolores Ibarruri 34, local 4
 10600 Plasencia
 CACERES

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