javier pena (Madrid, 1986) has been feeding hope for five years with his viral videos of ‘Hope. Standing for the planet’that have made him one of the biggest environmental ‘influencers’ in the world. “The greatest threat to the future of humanity is the loss of hope,” he maintains in his recent TED talk, in which he tries to spread his enthusiasm for the idea that, in his opinion, could mark the turning point in the climate crisis. : soil regeneration.
“Our best and most reliable reservoir is under our feet”, Javier holds, with a handful of fertile soil in his hands. “A soil rich in nutrients, microorganisms, fungi, insects and roots acts like a sponge, retains water and does not require agrochemicals (…) Spain can be a leader in this agrarian revolution and be at the forefront, with a national plan against drought that stimulates and certifies regenerative practices”.
“When we talk about solving the climate crisis, there is not one solution, but the sum of many, and one of the most promising is regenerative agriculture,” recalls Javier Peña. “The Intergovernmental Committee on Climate Change (IPCC) considers it as one of the four solutions with the greatest potential, almost on the same level as wind energy. The giants of agribusiness have understood that the only way to maintain crops is to cooperate with the nature and have set their sights on achieving 50% of their production from regenerative agriculture by 2030”.
Equipped with “hope” and with his audiovisual capacity, Javier Peña has launched in recent months to explore the increasingly tangible examples of this incipient “agrarian revolution”.
After passing through the regenerative farm of Los Planeses (Girona) where the CREAF researcher Marc Gràcia has spent years demonstrating the potential of the new agri-food model, his last stop has been in the olive groves of Luque (Córdoba), to demonstrate the brutal contrast between the traditional olive grove with the degraded and eroded soils and the olive grove of the future converted into a fertile pasture…