Organic Farm
Our estate occupies 1500 acres at the top of the Serranía de Ronda, in Andalusia; a rolling terrain ranging from rocky crags and old oaks to olive and almond groves, through green valleys dotted with plantations, organic orchards and a vineyard. We have sheep and goats, rare and endangered breeds of cattle such as the pajuna cow, chickens and bees, we breed Lusitanian horses, and we help ourselves with a team of German draught horses, mules and donkeys to work the land.
Our approach to agriculture is open and experimental; a blend of tradition and innovation, but based on permaculture design principles. The same principles form the basis of everything we do at La Donaira, from ecological education and interior design to collaborative art festivals. And the coming and going of volunteers, experts and guests from all walks of life brings fresh thinking – a kind of philosophical polyculture that sows brilliant new ideas about better ways of doing things in all areas of life.
The modern project in its Promethean ambitions and Cartesian methods has on balance turned out badly. We are in a social crisis, an economic crisis and a spiritual crisis.
Modern Food plays a central part in life’s requiem: unlike most peoples’ intuitive reasoning about planes, cars and power plants it is a fact that over 30% of all green house gases are released by petrochemical agriculture and factory farms. In the course of this devastating food production process we are poisoning our soil, our water, our air and ourselves. Every day hundreds of thousands of tons of pesticides, herbicides, hormones, antibiotics, chemical fertilizers and greenhouse gases are burped, farted and dumped into the biosphere. We wage a silent war on life itself: A spectacular design failure that nevertheless continues to thrive and expand, supported by industry lobbied legislation and subsidized with billions in public funding.
