Portugal

ECO123 spoke to Rodrigo Rocha, the coordinator of WWOOF Portugal, who lives in Estremoz and Sagres. Rocha is 39 years old. Originally from Santos in Brazil, he came to Portugal when he was 17, studied geology in Coimbra, and completed his doctorate at the University of Évora. He is the father of twins, and he loves the sea. ECO123: How did you become a founder member of WWOOF in Portugal, and how did WWOOF start in Portugal? Rodrigo Rocha: The first time I heard anything about WWOOF was when a friend of mine was living and working on a farm …

Miguel Fragoso (mechanical engineer) began his career in the maintenance and mechanical department in 1987 at Rodoviária Nacional (RN (National Coaches)) servicing the Algarve fleet of what was then RN. In 1989, he took over another company in the Barraqueiro group. Today, the group is made up of four companies and including EVA and Frota Azul Algarve. ECO123: How did you get to work today? Miguel Fragoso: By car because I live in Vilamoura and my role in the company forces me to travel around and that means I cannot avoid giving up on a personal vehicle due its availability …

Creative Commons is a non-profit organisation that frequently gets described as in the vanguard of the copyleft (1) movement that seeks to build a rich public domain as an alternative to the traditional copyright with its “all rights reserved”. To learn more about the organisation, its objectives and actions in Portugal, ECO123 talked with Teresa Nobre.   ECO123: What exactly is Creative Commons and what is its positioning in Portugal? Creative Commons (CC) is a non-profit organisation that provides free of charge licenses for the utilisation of works and materials protected by author royalty and other rights as well as …

On the outskirts of Lagos, in Sargaçal, Guillaume Leroux, aged 49, Luso-French – or Franco-Algarve -, has been producing Algarve’s first organic wine since 2012. ECO123 set off to meet him on Monte da Casteleja, the 6.5 hectare estate he inherited from his mother’s side of the family, to find out just what is and how you produce organic wine. Guillaume Leroux (GL) – Aged 18, following the death of my father, I returned to France and began to study agriculture, which had always been my interest. I began with landscaping and parks before moving onto general agriculture and cattle …

How come almost half of humanity spends all its time talking about food, about the best ingredients and wonderful recipes, only to then inflict exactly the opposite on their bodies, in most cases? Food that is too full of fat and calories, and often not at all healthy; most people eat supermarket meat produced though intensive livestock farming, where the origin of all those chops and steaks and sausages is by no means transparent. Many people don’t even want to know. Are our eating and drinking habits falling victim to the thoughtlessness of our era of fast living? Just don’t …

‘Mestre de terra’ * Joaquim Carneiro welcomed ECO123 to the warehouse where he practises his profession at the premises of Docapesca (1) by the river Arade and close to the town of Parchal (municipality of Lagoa). Nearly 84, master Joaquim still works every day, seated among kilometres of fishing nets which he mends with enviable skill and vigour. His discourse is frequently inflamed with the passion of those who still argue for what they believe in and who believe in a better future. Such as when he defends the indispensable practice of the closed season to protect species, or when …

A second-hand store guide (Algarve) Born out of creativity and crisis, second-hand shops have been proliferating throughout the country, buying and selling almost anything you can imagine. Apart from cars, it is the gold business which has the biggest market share, since the Portuguese have always bought this commodity as a security in times of financial difficulty. Clothing, furniture, electrical appliances and similar goods used to be sold largely by charity shops, to which people donated things they didn’t want any more. But that is no longer the case and buying and selling these articles (even on consignment) has become …

It’s not every day that you meet the Minister, if you don’t live in the capital yourself, and even if you do, the Minister himself doesn’t spend every day in the capital. He often travels around the country, sometimes even abroad. Around midday he was expected at a lunch with the businesspeople of the Portuguese and Foreign Chambers of Industry and Commerce. You paid fifty euros for admission, plus VAT, and then were happy to wait for the Minister. Sometimes you wait your whole life for something, often you don’t know why, almost always without an obvious reason. Waiting is …

‘A Rocha’, an organisation that is present in 20 countries (including the UK and the USA) came into being in the Algarve in 1985. It represents the fulfilment of the dream of Peter Harris, an Anglican priest and ornithologist, who decided to include nature conservation as a missionary objective in the church’s social agenda at a time when the environment and its defence were concepts that were little discussed in Portugal. And ‘A Rocha’ continues in the name because its founder and now honorary president speaks of the major contribution made by Portugal to the ‘Latinism’ of the project. ECO123 …

Just a few minutes from Faro is ‘Lura’, an educational farm set up with the motto of ‘learning naturally’, where environmental education is taught together with scientific knowledge. ECO123 talked to its founder and mentor, Sara Vítor. ECO123: What is the ‘Lura’ project? Sara Vítor: It began as a kind of way out for a teacher who didn’t get a teaching post. It’s a way of continuing teaching and working with children, linking this to my own personal evolution but returning to my origins. That’s why I returned to ‘Lura’, which is my family’s ‘burrow’. In this space in the …