Straight from La Junquera farm, in Murcia, Spain, a Walking the Land episode with Alfonso Chico de Guzmán, a regenerative livestock farmer.
What does it take for a large-scale, extremely dry, challenging farm to reintroduce animals when everyone, including their grandmother and grandfather, says, “You can’t. This landscape will never sustain animals outside, let alone cows outside year-round. They can never survive, there’s not enough grass, there’s not enough to eat”?
It starts as a hobby. So, you take a few cows just like someone in the city would take a cat or dog or a chihuahua, and it slowly gets out of hand. But what really enables this kind of grazing in these circumstances is technology, virtual fencing, virtual shepherding to be precise. This is ag-tech done right. It enables farmers to hold more complexity on the land. In this landscape it would be impossible to have these animals outside year-round because you would have to fence it. You have to drill, and basically it takes a week to put in a fence that the cows maybe use for two days. So that’s not a very good multiple.
But it’s not all tech. You also need, in this case, a really good young cowboy to manage the cows, the grazing plan, and really make it work. A lot of trial and error followed to figure out how to integrate the cows into the rest of the farm. They love to clean up the grain fields after harvest or, with a failed grain crop, eat the whole (small) grain. They feed on oak leaves. They love almonds (which is probably not such a good idea). They thrive as mothers and really do well as a growing herd.
Alfonso hasn’t cracked the code yet on flavour. When does it make sense to harvest the cows? How fat do they need to be, and is that even possible with the limited amount of grass available? Or do you send them elsewhere- potentially to a feedlot to get fat, which Alfonso hates- or to another farm with more grass? All huge questions. But… even with current prices, even with current practices, this makes financial sense and it makes more financial sense than grain, which is traditional in the region and has really struggled in recent years.
So, this is a story about the reintroduction of animals as a tool, with all the animal welfare worked out, on a farm that has been transitioning to perennials, transitioning away from annual crops, and seems to have found the puzzle pieces to actually make it thrive. And now the question is: how to get more cows? How to get sturdier cows? How to get stronger cows that can survive outside and thrive outside? And that is surprisingly difficult. Getting cows from too far away almost guarantees that they won’t adapt quickly and won’t thrive.
And yes, there’s work to do. Are the numbers large enough to see the impact on the land? Not yet. Can we see that the land is not suffering with the animals on top? Absolutely. What is the maximum carrying capacity? Nobody knows. They’re grazing in a landscape where cows have disappeared or they’re inside in factory farms and where sheep are disappearing. How are you going to manage these landscapes at scale? How are you going to support against fires and really impact the landscape?
Beyond cows, this is a blueprint for dryland regeneration. Ponds slow stormwater, aromatics stabilize slopes, and planned grasslands increase infiltration and biodiversity. We talk nutrient density, flavor, and how management changes meat quality; we talk permits, grazing rights, and the talent it takes to ride 70 kilometers in two days. Most of all, Alfonso make the case for patient capital and watershed thinking: if funding timelines matched ecological timelines, more farms could switch from extractive annuals to living systems that pay their way.
This episode is part of the Role of Animals in food and agriculture systems of the future series, supported and co-produced by the Datamars Sustainability Foundation.
THE ROLE OF ANIMALS IN THE LANDSCAPE
Alfonso reflects on the traditional and ecological importance of grazing animals in this region. Environmental groups are now advocating for their return to manage the landscape and prevent disasters like wildfires.
“They are very pushy that we need to have animals back. And that, getting all the sheep out of the system is going to be a disaster. Well, first of all, because of the fires, then also on all the gallies and all these wetlands that, when we have floods, if all of that is so full of dry material, then it gets stuck and then it’s when it makes these big floodings.” Alfonso Chico de Guzmán
WHY COWS HAVE DISAPPEARED
We explore the historical decline of livestock in the area. Alfonso points to an aging farming population and a lack of successors as the primary reason for this disappearance.
“Most of the farmers are quite old. They’re retiring and there’s not that many young people. And in the case of cows, a lot of people are a bit scared of cows because the only cows they’ve seen in this area are the bullfighting cows […] and they’re really aggressive. So, I think people have that idea in their heads, that cows are really dangerous and really aggressive, because they haven’t seen a lot of just meat cows or normal cows.” Alfonso Chico de Guzmán
WHY IT MAKES SO MUCH SENSE TO BRING THEM BACK
There is an economic and agricultural logic behind reintroducing cows. Even in disastrous years for grain crops, there was always enough biomass to sustain the animals, making them a more resilient enterprise. Hardy local genetics like the endangered Murciano Levantina, plus tough mountain cows born on-farm, outperformed imports with almost no purchased feed.
“Maybe you don’t have the crop or the grain because it got too small so the combiner couldn’t harvest it. But then you have all of that available for cows… So even in the worst years, we had a lot of food for cows.” Alfonso Chico de Guzmán
WHY TECHNOLOGY IS FUNDAMENTAL TO MAKE IT HAPPEN
Alfonso discusses the practical limitations of traditional fencing in this vast, dry landscape. Virtual fencing technology is not just an improvement, but an absolute necessity for managing grazing animals here at scale. With GPS collars and a phone-drawn boundary, they can move animals across vast, unfenced plots in minutes.
“The problem is that also in these very dry years, when we have to do that on someone else’s farm, maybe we can fence a hill of 50 hectares. It takes us a week, but they’re going to eat it in three days. So, it’s impossible. And how many people do we have to put up that fence temporarily? […] Otherwise, we couldn’t have cows, or we could have cows, but we would have to feed them, I dunno, six months, a year or something. With this [virtual fencing] they’re always outside; they’re always grazing.” Alfonso Chico de Guzmán
THE CRUCIAL ROLE OF HUMANS IN THIS TRANSITION
The success of the cattle operation is heavily dependent on skilled, dedicated people. Without the specific knowledge and commitment of his talented 23-year-old cowboy, Ismael, the entire system would not be viable.
“It takes someone that really likes doing that and knows how to do it… if it wouldn’t have been for him, I think other cowboys would’ve said, yeah, there’s no food in this farm. Let’s start buying food instead of moving them, day trips here, day trips there, and, doing all of that.” Alfonso Chico de Guzmán
WHY THE ANNUALS ARE SUFFERING AND ALFONSO IS TRANSITIONING TO PERENNIALS
Poor and unreliable economics of annual grain crops in this challenging environment is a reality, even in a record year. This financial reality, coupled with the soil and biodiversity benefits, is driving his shift towards perennial systems like permanent pasture.
“The price I think is 18 cents a kilo… we got 400 euros per hectare of income and seeding the grains, fertilizing the grains… it’s costing us 450 euros per hectare… so yes, because of subsidies, we managed to break even and have a little profit. But having a little profit because of subsidies in the best year of the best record is ridiculous.” Alfonso Chico de Guzmán
OTHER POINTS DISCUSSED
Koen and Alfonso also talked about
- Water management and pond building.
- Challenges of livestock genetics.
- Farming license and regulatory difficulties.
LINKS:
LINKED INTERVIEWS:
- Yanniek Schoonhoven – Training the next generation of farmers with an academy and regenerative farm of 1100HA
- Ichsani Wheeler – We need more large animals in our landscapes
- Walking the land with Benedikt Boesel – Fully integrating 300 cows into a 1000-hectare arable very sandy farm
- Dianne, Ian and Matthew Haggerty – Food, not commodities: how regenerative agriculture works at scale on 63,000 acres
- Jonathan Lundgren – You need more cows, not fewer, to save the planet
- Knut Bentzen on how to scale virtual fencing, the true enabler of regeneration
- Oscar Hovde Berntsen on how a global leader in virtual fencing comes from a tiny Norwegian town
- Fred Provenza – What should we learn from domesticated animals when it comes to food as medicine
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