Regeneration Academy

What a year it has been! Now that 2024 is coming to an end, we would like to share some key highlights from the past year. We have: - Grown our team; we now have seven incredible people on board! - Hosted four courses in collaboration with EIT Food - Organized two Crash Courses - Hosted our first course with Lighthouse Farm Academy - Ran two Research Programs at full capacity - Organized a huge sampling campaign with Soil Health Benchmarks, and continued our work with both Climate Farm Demo and Soil Health Benchmarks - Worked with EARA | European Alliance for Regenerative Agriculture to keep on scaling Regenerative Agriculture - Started to utilize the first part of our Regenerative Agriculture HUB - Attended numerous inspiring conferences and gatherings - Were featured in various documentaries, such as Eat More Trees and Resilience Food Stories Despite achievements, this year brought challenges as well. Prolonged drought, followed by rains, caused damage to the land and constructions at La Junquera Farm. While this damage is incomparable to the suffering in the Valencia region, the challenges reaffirm our belief that regenerative agriculture is the only path forward. We would like to thank everyone who has supported our mission in 2024: Through your work, visits and knowledge sharing, we continue to expand efforts in landscape regeneration. We are excited for ongoing collaboration in 2025. For now, on behalf of our team, we wish you a healthy and loving new year. #regenerativeagriculture #soilhealth #waterretention #biodiversity

We are excited to host our next crash course from 12 to 17 May 2025, in collaboration with Climate Farm School at La Junquera Farm ! You can now sign up via the link to secure your spot. #regenerativeagriculture #agriculture #landscaperestoration #fourreturns #soilhealth #waterretention #biodiversity

Este pasado miércoles La Junquera Farm estuvo en Bruselas en los Agricultural & Rural Inspiration Awards, organizado por la EU CAP Network. Donde fuimos reconocidos como el segundo mejor proyecto a nivel europeo en la categoría de protección medioambiental! Esto se ha ido construyendo durante muchos años en un lugar aislado y con uno de los climas más duros de Europa. Pero como dice Jerónimo Romero los sitios lo hacen las personas, y este es el claro ejemplo. Gracias al trabajo de gente increíble, única, valiente y muy dura, La Junquera se lo merece. Alfonso Chico de GuzmanYanniek SchoonhovenSilvia QuartaClara-Hanna BoschAlessandro GoriLuis Leblanc TorresGabriel Molina GarcíaMaria Braun Janneke EnzerinkJerónimo Romero.

It's #WorldSoilDay! Nearly 75% of Spain’s land is at risk of #desertification, marked by dwindling rains and increasing soil erosion. In the heart of the country’s Iberian Peninsula, La Junquera Farm is a beacon of hope amid an increasingly harsh, dry climate. With the support of farmers, community members, restoration experts, and volunteers, the team has transformed 1,100 hectares of desertified land into a thriving ecosystem. Here, stakeholders are deploying cutting-edge #regenerativeagriculture techniques, #rewilding strategies, and innovative #watermanagement practices to heal the land. Their journey is proof of nature’s resilience and the power of landscape partnerships as a roadmap to restoration. 🌍 Dive into the inspiring sights and sounds of regeneration in this video, produced by the talented team at Efecto Colibrí. #RegenerativeAgriculture #Desertification #Sustainability #UNCCDCOP16 #COP16Riyadh #GenerationRestoration

It is World Soil Day! This years theme is: Caring for Soils: Measure, Monitor, Manage Earlier this week, during the Land-Manager Focused Indicator Workshop in collaboration with Soil Health Benchmarks, we explored practical approaches to measure #soil health directly on farms at La Junquera Farm. By offering hands-on tools for measuring soil health in the field, the workshop aligns perfectly with this year's theme. We look forward to keep on measuring, monitoring, and managing for the benefit of soil health!

Our intern Fenia Meramveliotaki recently participated in our #Water Resource Management course, organized in collaboration with EIT Food . She shared some of her key insights. One that stands out: ''water management is not an isolated endeavor''. Thanks to EIT Food for facilitating the organization of these important courses, and to the 30 #farmers that participated! An important step toward better water #resource management.

Progress and updates from the educational hub for regenerative agriculture Last week, we held an online meeting to reflect on our journey and share updates on the development of our educational hub for regenerative agriculture at La Junquera Farm. This hub is becoming a space for practitioners and entrepreneurs to advance #regenerativeagriculture and #ecosystemrestoration, particularly in semi-arid regions. Our vision is to expand and enhance the physical learning hub. We are building on existing facilities like the kitchen, educational spaces, and offices, while preparing for the next phase; adding processing facilities, a #soil lab, and more collaborative spaces. During the meeting, we discussed several significant developments that have shape our work: Working with local communities: Through our collaboration with villages in the Caravaca municipality, we are collectively working towards the revival of rural areas Advocacy for water sustainability: Water use is a pressing challenge in our region, and we are actively working to combat the issues of intensive irrigation and illegal water use. Engaging with local history: Events like Historias del Valle have connected us to the rich stories and legends of the valley, through storytelling and art. Education and inspiration for the next generation: High school students visit the farm yearly to learn about sustainability, entrepreneurship, and practical activities like reforestation. We hope to spark enthusiasm and a growing interest in ecological restoration. Expanding impact through research and policy: La Junquera serves as a model for benchmarking soils in Europe and exploring regenerative practices at a watershed scale. This progress would not have been possible without the incredible support of our contributors and community. A heartfelt thank you to everyone, our private funders, partners, and participants, who continue to believe in our mission and enable us to grow. Excitingly, we’ll soon share an updated newsletter highlighting our journey of the last year, along with ways you can contribute and collaborate. To stay informed, we encourage you to visit our site and subscribe to the newsletter: https://lnkd.in/ddbH5ce. Let’s keep growing this movement together. #RegenerativeAgriculture #EcosystemRestoration #Community

Two weeks ago, we collaborated with the Lighthouse Farm Academy to organize the Lighthouse Farm Lab "Restoring Landscapes''. Juliette Pott, one of our students of the Research Program, joined the course and shares her insights: "Having spent the past months at La Junquera Farm as an #intern, I’ve had the chance to explore the #farmingsystem. However, participating in the Lighthouse Farm Lab course offered me an extended view on both La Junquera and the surrounding Quípar Valley. The potential of shifting the gaze past the individual farm, and restoring a watershed like the Quípar Valley, was highlighted. This restoration process involves various #stakeholders, which does not only demonstrate its complexity but also highlights the many opportunities for the valley’s future, relating to the return of inspiration, nature, and people which connects to the four returns framework of Commonland''. During the week, Rogier Schulte and Lizzy Freed from Ligthouse Farm Academy, Yanniek Schoonhoven and Alfonso Chico de Guzman, and Tewodros Gebreegziabher Asresehegn showed various examples of successful restoration efforts at La Junquera and other lighthouse farms worldwide. They shared their passion and dedication to restoring #agroecosystems. Thanks to everyone who participated, we are looking forward to ongoing restoration efforts.

How to produce food in one of the most challenging environments of Europe? And how to do that in a way that also regenerates the desertified landscape? Last week I was inspired by a visit to the farm #LaJunquera in Murcia-Spain that is run by Yanniek Schoonhoven and Alfonso Chico de Guzman. The visit was part of the Lighthouse Farm Academy, which is a great program by Wageningen University & Research that is led by Rogier Schulte, Lizzy Freed and Miel Hooijdonk. ‘Resilience is the new efficiency’ is a motto that is applied in all aspects of farming at La Junquera. Creating #biodiversity by planting 20+ crops including perennials, restoring natural reserves and managed grazing of cows. Creating water buffers by digging ponds, swales, dikes and practicing contour tilling (‘don’t till downhill’) to maximize the water absorption capacity of the soil. No use of synthetic fertilizer or pesticides to safeguard soil life. And many more #organicagriculture and #regenerativeagriculture practices. With #climatechange at hand and 40% of our productive land being degraded, the best way to assure #foodsecurity is by building #resilience into our food systems and restoring natural ecosystems. This is not some experimental lab pilot, but reality at a 2200 hectare farm. And fortunately also part of The Global Network of Lighthouse Farms with many more inspiring real-life examples of #sustainableagriculture in practice from around the world. #GrowingABetterWorldTogether www.lajunquera.com

The impact of tillage on soil infiltration rates in dryland farming is crucial for understanding regenerative practices. During the recent Regeneration Academy crash course, we conducted a revealing experiment to showcase this effect on our farm La Junquera Farm and a neighbouring field. In Picture 1, depicting an almond field left untilled for 7 years, the infiltration time was remarkably swift at only 1 minute, with a compaction layer identified at 60cm depth. Contrastingly, Picture 2 illustrates an almond field featuring vegetation strips and minimal tillage twice a year. Here, the infiltration time in the vegetation strip extended to 1.5 minutes, with a compaction layer detected at 40cm depth. The most striking contrast emerged in Picture 3, showcasing an almond field subjected to intensive tillage 8 times annually. In this scenario, the infiltration time dramatically increased to 15 minutes, with a compaction layer forming at a mere 20cm depth. These visual representations underscore the impact of tillage frequency on soil health and water infiltration rates, emphasizing the importance of adopting minimum tillage practices and vegetation strips and ground cover in dryland farming for long-term agricultural viability. #groundcover #SustainableFarming #SoilHealth #murcia #CAP #soilmission #minimumtillage #regenerative