Freixo do Meio: Montado is more

Bare summer plains, as far as the eye can see. No water, no shade. Only a very occasional tree. Otherwise: emptiness. Tourist agencies attempt to make the Alentejo appealing to visitors with this very clear scenic icon. But it is hard to live and work in such a sparse landscape. Dilapidated farms in the whole district testify to a massive demise in farming.

Perhaps nature in the Alentejo dreams a different dream. A dream of dispersed, multi-layer afforestation, of streams, ponds and a diversity of plants and animals, of abundance and fertility.

The Greek philosopher Strabo said: “A squirrel could traverse the Iberian Peninsula without once touching the ground.” Rural dwellers in those days used and nurtured the natural mixed forest with all its variety and developed it into a “montado”: a small-scale, sustainable form of cultivation and livestock farming in the shade of dispersed mixed woodland with multiple uses. Protected from the heat of the sun, and as the storage vessel for the winter rainwater, the ground produced almost everything that man and beast needed to live at that time.

With the building of dams and industrialisation, large-scale monocultures were introduced – ranging from cork and wheat to plantations for pulpwood and irrigated olive trees – and destroyed the old agro-forestry, the irrigation ditches and the ecological and social balance.

But today there are once again farmers who recognise and use the value of the montado.

In the northern Alentejo, to the north of Montemor-o-Novo, away from the main roads, sparse forests of cork oaks, holm oaks, chestnut trees and gnarled olive trees flourish. Lichen-covered granite rocks appear to have been scattered by giant hands. All around arbutus and blackberry bushes and indigenous herbs thrive. Occasionally a small field of cereal crops, here and there ponds of rainwater. We keep running into families of cows, herds of goats and pigs lolling about at the roadside or rummaging for food in the bushes. A small group of shy Sorraia – Portuguese wild horses – run off as soon as they hear the noise of humans.

What looks like a fairy-tale forest is actually part of the productive land of the organic farm “Freixo de Meio”. When the owner, fifty-year-old Alfredo Sendim Cunhal, guides visitors around his property, they begin to get an idea of what montado could really mean.

He explains: “Montado is more than extensive pig rearing under monocultures of cork oaks. Montados are biotopes of trees, shrubs and herbaceous plants as well as animals that live there, and water which is stored there. Montado means recognising the interaction between natural processes and putting it to purposeful use – water, soil, biomass, feed, fertiliser, human processing. Montado is a cycle that does not stop at the forest edge. The whole farm is part of the montado. And people too.”

At the start of the 1990s, the Cunhals were given back their property Freixo do Meio, which had been allocated to a cooperative in the land reforms. But this had failed, the property fell into disrepair and Alfredo’s mother was concerned about their former neighbours and workers. Together with her, the trained livestock farmer started to rebuild the business and to employ people from the village. Today, Freixo do Meio is still the biggest organic farm in Portugal – despite a period of streamlining. As every morning, today too Alfredo greets his 16 staff and some trainees at eight o’clock in a short morning ritual. They stand in a circle, share out the work, Alfredo greets each with a handshake – a landowner of the old school with new visions.

After his return, he faced major challenges. He knew that he wouldn’t be able to overcome them with conventional agriculture. “With agriculture, the dictatorship and socialism pursued the same strategy: intensification and specialisation. But I soon realised that that was not the right way. Firstly for social reasons: people in the village had always found work at Freixo de Meio, and, despite the revolution, I still felt a sense of social responsibility. If we had specialised, I would have had to dismiss them all.”

But he wasn’t persuaded by so-called modern agriculture from an ecological point of view either. Because the region, with its hot, dry summers, its heavy rainfall in the winter and its extremely slow soil formation owing to the granite substrate, is difficult, to put it mildly. Only a few products can be cultivated here profitably on their own, and that needs a lot of chemicals. What would the alternative be?

“The older people told me at that time that, when they were children, they still produced everything themselves that they needed to live – a lot of different cereal crops and vegetables, fruit, honey, wood, dairy products, meat, mushrooms, leather, wool, clay for house building and ceramics – and cork for selling. Only salt and iron were imported into the region. How was that possible given the bad conditions?”

Today Alfredo is certain that the montado in this region is the only way of farming sustainably and ensuring that they have everything necessary, even in times of crisis. “In the montado, the ground is always covered. The year-round vegetation stores the moisture, and vigorous decomposition of the biomass leads to good soil formation.”

Unlike the neighbouring properties, Alfredo retained and nurtured the existing oak forests and olive plantation and even added new trees to created mixed woods. As in the old days, he let animals graze under the trees again: rare breeds of cattle, herds of goats, pigs.

Alfredo: “Our vegetable greenhouses are part of the montado, because they are fertilised with the manure from the animals that feed in the woods.”

On our tour we can see numerous synergies: branches from thinning the olive groves are thrown into the harvested vegetable fields. They are eaten by the goats, and their manure fertilises the fields. Part of the cereal crops that are sown in the forests are eaten by the pigs where they grow. In the process, they churn up the earth and prepare it for the next sowing.

And of course, all organic waste is composted or used as feed. Even the pulped remains from the olive press – normally a real waste problem – are fermented and given to the pigs as high energy feed.

Alfredo: “Such synergies can only be used by a farmer who aligns their operating procedures with nature, and doesn’t keep them apart through specialisation and intensification.”

Each new synergy led to new branches of the business, and in this way a diverse farm developed. Freixo de Meio provides almost 300 different products, but only a small quantity of each one. The harvesting technique is almost reminiscent of the gatherer cultures of the past. Here two bags of cabbage, there a few bags of dried tomatoes, and over there a small bundle of aromatic herbs. How can something like that be marketed profitably?

“Economically, things were very difficult for a long time,” Alfredo admits. “The market and the food industry are geared towards large quantities. Everything runs centrally via Lisbon. The local markets were closed. Even the regional processing businesses gradually folded, and our quantities are not sufficient for industrial processing. As the villages around us were dying out, we found ourselves forced to process and market our products ourselves.”

Nature accords with Alfredo’s way of farming – but for a long time it didn’t bring economic success. The market for organic food in Portugal is still small – and most products are imported from large-scale certified producers in Germany, France or even China. For a long time, Alfredo had to sell his organic produce – meat, wine, grain, vegetables and herbs – as conventional products, with a corresponding loss of profit. The family wouldn’t keep going in that way for ever, they wanted the business to get into the black, and difficulties arose with the brothers. In the end, the farm’s original 2,000 hectares were divided. Alfredo kept 400 hectares. The prospects of withstanding this crisis and contraction were not good. Many other farmers in a similar situation have thrown in the towel – adapted or given up. Alfredo could feel it clearly: farmers who cooperate with nature are swimming against the system.

“The profession of farmer is understood in too narrow a way. True farmers do much more than grow products. They preserve the countryside, the soil, the water. They preserve the seed for the future. A farm that is embedded in its region ensures that there are jobs and processing businesses. That also has to be acknowledged.”

The only way of retaining the farming community was to have consumers who are aware of the value of farm-produced food and are prepared to pay a corresponding price, he said. These days, Alfredo finds such aware clients in his own shop in Lisbon. It is the economic backbone of his business. Since Freixo do Meio has been selling its entire range to end consumers, things have slowly been improving.

As far as processing is concerned, Alfredo has also gone his own way. His vision is to transform his farm into a kind of eco-village.

“The village communities in the Alentejo and their small processing businesses have died out. Our quantities are not sufficient for industrial processing, and this is often not organic. We are obliged to process our products ourselves if we want to make a profit. My idea is to gradually rebuild the lost jobs and professions – on the farm.”

Craftspeople, students and former workers have opened independent small businesses at Freixo de Meio, in some cases with their families. The old buildings, which surround a courtyard on three sides, today house an olive press, a drier for tomatoes and herbs, a shed for making ketchup and tinned vegetables, a bakery, and even a smithy for traditional farm implements and a farm shop. The changes are gradually bearing fruit. “Things are on the up,” says Alfredo. Freixo de Meio appears to be getting there.

Alfredo Sendim Cunhal is well known in Portugal as a courageous and rigorous organic farmer, entrepreneur and visionary. In the Portuguese manner – gentle and very reserved – he is an agrarian rebel. Without his good reputation and his consistently courageous approach, the business would probably not have survived. Through his perseverance, he is also blazing a trail for other farmers to dare to do something different. Quite inconspicuously, a vision of a new kind of farming is emerging here. Including healthy food.