Quico Ónega López: «If we exceed the planetary limits there will be no corner of the planet that will not be affected»
The Earth. The ground we walk on. The planet we live on. Moreover, the name that distinguishes our Campus. The Earth is our identity and our home. That is why this week is so special. On April 22th took place, as it does every year, Earth Day. And, to celebrate it, today we talk to Quico Ónega López.
Agricultural engineer, livestock farmer, researcher at the Laboratorio do Territorio da Universidade de Santiago de Compostela and the Support Service of the European Association for Innovation in Agriculture (EIP-AGRI)... The curriculum of Quico Ónega López, who in the past was manager of the Banco de Terras de Galicia and professor in the Doctorate Program in Sustainable Land and Territory Management, is impressive.
This translates into a solid track record, with more than two decades of experience in relevant areas such as land policies and their management instruments, rural development and the conservation of natural resources.
For this reason, few people are as qualified as him to explain why global problems have a local origin, what the peculiarities of the Galician territory are, or why the existence of instruments and agencies that optimize land management is important.
-This week is Earth Day. What do you think are the main challenges ahead of us in this matter?
-The challenges seem to be piling up, and not exactly small ones. The Stockholm Resilience Institute has identified nine planetary processes critical to maintaining the stability of the Earth system and the conditions for life as we have understood it over the past millennia. We would have already overcome six of them due to human action. The one we seem to have most in vogue is climate change. Still, we must add others, such as the accelerated loss of biodiversity or the massive diffusion of polluting substances.
It seems that when we talk about the global scale, these challenges do not go with us, but the global one has its origin in the sum and interaction of local processes. Ultimately, how land and territories are managed on a small scale will lead to these global effects and vice versa. If we go beyond the planetary limits, there will be no corner of the planet that will not be affected. We see this clearly with the climate.
We only have to think of the last five years and how we are getting used to a succession of abnormal meteorological phenomena in each of our parishes. On the other hand, maybe we think that eating grapes imported from South Africa in January is the same as eating apples from our neighbor in September, for example.
-You have done extensive research on improving land policies and creating land management tools at local, regional and international levels. Let's stick to what is closest to us: Isn't this a major challenge in a land like Galicia? Perhaps one of the most complex regions in Europe in this area due to the massive atomization of property.
-Territorial management is important everywhere. Managing the territory means reflecting and acting actively on societies' access, use and conservation of natural resources and also on how these resources are distributed. The challenge is important for all people. What changes are the environmental, institutional, cultural or economic conditions in which this management takes place?
One of the characteristic conditions of Galicia is indeed the fragmentation of land ownership. However, it is also very characteristic of the country, perhaps more so, the presence of neighboring forests in common ownership. In my opinion, the challenge is not the ownership structure itself. If we had large estates, we would have other problems, and it is not clear that they would be smaller; quite the contrary.
The real challenge is to adjust the instruments and approaches of territorial management to these structures, have the vision of the territory we want, and get the diagnoses of the real problems right. For example, if we directly apply recipes that were designed for different territories, surely they will not work here or not in the same way.
-You participated in the creation of the Banco de Terras de Galicia and were its manager at the time. To what extent is this tool important for a territory like Galicia?
-Like all tools, it depends on how it is used. The Banco de Terras's appearance came precisely to recognize that the particularities of land ownership and land use in Galicia and its dynamics in recent decades required new tools.
Land consolidation has been the practically universal instrument used since the middle of the last century, and it has also been applied with models imported from regions quite different from our country. Does this mean that land reorganization does not work? No. What I am saying is that it is useful to address some problems in some areas, but it is not the solution for everything or everywhere.
In fact, according to the dynamics of use, it is becoming less and less. Nor is the Banco de Terras going to solve everything. That is why, little by little, the Administration has been designing other instruments that complement each other by improving the understanding of territorial dynamics and how the configuration of the property influences them. We need a toolbox to address territorial diversity and complexity but also to adapt to how the territory is changing.
-Preventing fires, resolving neighborhood conflicts, and determining the dimensions of the right livestock and agricultural holdings. To a layman, it might seem that your discipline of knowledge is far away, but in reality, any solution you propose has almost a horizontal aspect because it touches on problems that affect us all. Is that so?
-I don't think any of this is alien in a country with more than a million and a half people who own rural land. What Galician family has not thought about, or worried about, having to clean up a farm? Or will they have spent an afternoon looking for a frame or rummaging through the papers to find a parcel? How many of us were or will be heirs of land?
Not to mention eating. I'd like to think that we still know where food comes from in Galicia. All this, I think, is something relatively familiar. For me, the question is another: Are we aware of how the decisions of use (or non-use) of our lands affect the whole territory? And how, in the medium or long term, will the sum of these decisions affect us again, as if it were a boomerang? We can go back to the example of grapes but in a much closer way.
-Since 2013, you have been a research and science officer at the European Agricultural Innovation Partnership Support Service (EIP-AGRI), which is driven by the European Commission. What is this body, and what does its work consist of?
-After the 2008 crisis, the European Union promoted a series of policy axes to try to alleviate the effects of the financial collapse. One of them was to emphasize the importance of cross-cutting innovation in all sectors and policies. It created the European Innovation Partnerships (EIP) with the aim of mobilizing public and private agents for this purpose.
This was also the case for agriculture and forestry. With the EIP-AGRI, the Commission seeks to promote and facilitate cooperation between agricultural and rural stakeholders to improve innovation and knowledge systems. The starting premise is that collaboration between actors in research, production, industry, consultancy, public administrations at different levels and consumers will lead to the emergence and, above all, the application of innovative practices and approaches in agriculture, not only at the production level but also at the level of organization, value chain, governance...
What is important is cooperating and assuming that all the groups involved have valuable knowledge, not only the researchers and that new things of greater value will emerge from the collaboration and exchange of this knowledge. As usual, new words are invented to sound modern, and now we are talking about co-creation. What all our lives was cooperation.
To carry out this EIPAGRI initiative, the Commission created the so-called Support Facility, a kind of technical support service to carry out activities to promote and encourage it at the European level, of which Campus Terra forms part through LaboraTe. Again, this support service carries out actions that promote the exchange of knowledge or the promotion of collaboration of different groups in new innovation projects, such as the so-called Operational Groups.
-The Common Agricultural Policy is surely one of the most important areas of regulatory action in the European Union. What should this instrument be like, and what should its objectives be from your point of view?
-More than policy action, the CAP is a financial instrument. It is the European Union's main expenditure chapter, and it has already been much more so. Simplifying a little, the CAP, more than regulations, is comprised of various types of aid, both aimed directly at farmers and other beneficiaries of rural areas. A different thing is that, to receive CAP aid, the beneficiaries have to comply with certain regulations. Regulations exist, many of them outside the CAP, and they would also have to be complied with even if they do not receive aid.
To use another simile, it is like when we apply for aid to change the car and collect it; we cannot have debts for traffic fines. To acquire the new vehicle, we would have to pay the fine anyway, even without receiving aid. Still, it seems reasonable to think that we cannot receive the aid if we do not comply with other 'basic' obligations. If we want to receive the aid, we must first pay the fine or the debts with Social Security, which would have nothing to do with the car.
In my opinion, the problem with the CAP is different. On the one hand, the objectives of the CAP changed over time, partly to give it social legitimacy and partly because the agricultural, social and environmental reality also changed a lot. Still, the instruments used in the type of aid envisaged perhaps did not evolve sufficiently to achieve those objectives and adapt to the new situation. On the contrary, the bureaucratic aspect became more and more entangled in trying to justify the aid, but without a substantial change in the impact achieved. Everything changed so that little or nothing changed in practice.
Moreover, the CAP, a common policy, has to address very different agricultural and rural realities in the European Union as a whole. The Member States indeed have room for adjustment, but they often lack the creativity, capacity or even interest to do so.
This brings us to a complicated point: the policy seems to please no one. Farmers perceive that to get paid the same or less, they have to comply with more requirements, and some do not see the point. The national and regional administrations are finding it more and more difficult to manage aid, partly due to the staff reduction policies that have been implemented in the last few years. The rest of society, even with differences from one place to another, is beginning to question the aids, which take up a large part of the European money, especially when they are directed at a certain type of agriculture, perceived as intensive and with an excessive environmental impact on the management of key resources such as soil, water or biodiversity.
Getting out of this crossroads is also a particularly important challenge ahead: we are not talking about just any sectoral policy; we are talking about the policy of the sector that feeds us and, at the same time, manages a very important part of European territory and basic natural resources. There are no magic and immediate formulas for complex problems. I believe that overcoming the current approach involves openly questioning the status quo, properly differentiating the different production models and their environmental and social (i.e., territorial) impact, and focusing on the real impact of the different measures.
-You have also been organic sheep farming on Pol's lands since 2007. Why did you decide to take this step at the time? Profession or devotion?
-Since I was young, I always had a desire to have some agricultural activity. I studied agricultural engineering largely because of this attraction to agriculture, particularly livestock farming. I had already tried before to leap into the sector and dedicate myself full-time to it. At the time, it was not possible, partly because my parents were not farmers, and it meant starting from scratch at all levels, including access to land. Later, another opportunity arose, a little unexpectedly, when I was already working at the Campus through the land of a colleague.
When I was starting a professional career that attracted me a lot at the Territory Laboratory of Campus Terra, I decided to start with the livestock activity and try to combine it with my work at the university, which I did not want to leave. What began as an experiment ended up consolidating, and I could not say which of the two aspects, profession or devotion, weighed more in the decision to continue with livestock farming in the future. Both are mutually reinforcing.
-And the last one. Agricultural engineer, stockbreeder, researcher, teacher... Yours is a very heterodox profile. Do you stick with any of the activities you do or do you find it difficult?
-I keep all of them. I am lucky to combine them, and some enrich the others. To give the example of the CAP: In my group on Campus, we have recently collaborated on elaborating the Strategic Plan of the CAP for Galicia, together with other colleagues from the USC. At the same time, we 'deal' with the CAP directly as beneficiaries in livestock farming. In the support service of EIPAGRI, we have the opportunity to follow more closely the approach of the CAP in Brussels and the kind of reflections that the Commission and the Member States make about its future.
It's often necessary to have a touch of 'schizophrenia' to accommodate the three perspectives of the same reality experienced firsthand. But in the end, we only have the whole thing when we put the parts together. There would be other examples: all these activities are a way of reflecting and interacting with the land and the territory from different angles and even with different parts of the body! I would not know which one to give up without losing an important element in understanding it and the ability to act to improve its future. It is undeniable that combining them requires giving up other facets, including time for the family. Still, I also think that the future I am talking about is also, and above all, that of my/our children.