Food, Air, and Water are just some of the essentials we depend on to stay alive. All these essentials can only be guaranteed by Nature, which we refer to here as the Natural System.
Humanity’s relationship with the living home it inhabits plays out across many dimensions, but the connection through food is undoubtedly the one that has most quickly become fragile and distorted. Our evolution on Earth has long created food scarcity. As Eduardo Lourenço reminded us, we did not embark on the maritime route to India simply to discover it, but to escape the misery we had created here.
The way we have grown and eaten has led to the tragedies of empires, war, privatization of common goods, individualism, extreme competitiveness, the temptation to dominate everything, and, above all, a state of material and emotional deprivation that we have subjected ourselves to, which has surely reduced us to a state of mere survival for at least 3,000 years. In other words, what we call the “Environmental Crisis” is, first and foremost, a question rooted in food. And what we now call “agriculture” is certainly a major part of the problem.
Reflecting on this, and being responsible for a significant piece of this home—600 hectares of the Montado do Freixo do Meio—and having personally experienced the indignity to which farmers are subjected by the current economic and social system, we can only strive to find other paths, other ways, and alternative methods for obtaining and sharing what we consider to be a common good. That is, food is for everyone, and everyone has the right to obtain it unconditionally, but it should not destroy our home; instead, it should rebuild it. Rebuilding the Natural System is about regeneration. This is our priority, without which we will not have the conditions to live.
The Freixo do Meio ecosystem, as has happened globally, instead of evolving naturally into more complex, efficient, and productive states (climax), has been subjected by us, humans, over the last 500 years to active degradation of various components such as soil, biodiversity, water, air, and natural forests, among others. The pragmatic consequences of this degradation are reduced productivity, lower energy efficiency, and increased susceptibility to climate change. In summary, the ecosystem we manage is much worse in every sense, especially regarding its ability to meet our needs.
Since 1993, our path has been to return to the ancestral attitude of solving our problems while respecting the limits of Nature. Practically, this means understanding that we are here to participate in a system that created us because it needs us (Macroorganisms Gaia), and only by acting for the whole can we reach the “us.” We call this approach Agroecology, which is an ancient ethics, a science, but primarily an ideological movement. In our region, this “agroecological” approach resulted in the system known as Montado. An agroecological system that began in the Neolithic, developed and spread in the Middle Ages, and to which we returned at the start of this project, adopting it as our refuge.
History, through the work of Ana Fonseca (Fonseca, 2004), helped us make this transition. Moving from a chemical and mechanical model to agroecology, always rooted in the Montado, was a first step, supported by the then-pioneering movement of organic farming. This change allowed us to reverse the path of destruction and dependency. More than two decades of respecting natural fertility cycles and enhancing biodiversity have passed. We have been chemical and GMO-free for over two decades, with minimal soil disturbance except in special cases, promoting forest regeneration after consciously and effectively abandoning the agricultural model followed since the Estado Novo and continued during the post-revolution period and Portugal’s entry into the European Economic Community.
Montado has allowed us to create a different economy that not only provides work to ten times more people than the regional average (30/3) but also feeds, in a different way, at least 50% of the daily needs of over 300 families (3 people). We have transitioned from three crops (sheep, wheat, and cork) to over 50; learned to transform natural resources into food; and built from scratch seven food processing units. It required significant investment of various types, but we survived. We were pioneers of the Farm-to-Fork movement, reaching consumers at markets, later with a store in Lisbon, creating one of the first Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) movements (“Partilhar as Colheitas”) as well as one of the first farmer online stores in our country.
But it’s not enough. We should be able to feed twenty times more people without degrading ecosystems to achieve true food sovereignty. For that, we need to regenerate. That’s why we actively seek to experience and introduce models and techniques that will help us get there: Agroecology, Permaculture, Montado, Organic Farming, Biodynamic Farming, dynamic succession agroforestry, working with water, fungi, and microorganisms, regenerative reforestation, holistic animal management, and many other ongoing visions. The Protected Area of Montado do Freixo do Meio allows, through its four zones (social, conservation, montado, and innovation), to reconcile the past with the present, and with the dreams and challenges of the future.
Eating at Montado do Freixo do Meio is not just about a fair share of an essential good obtained through agroecological means; it is fundamentally an opportunity to regenerate this piece of home and make it yours in a conscious, organized, safe, and collective way through cooperation with the various projects operating at Montado do Freixo do Meio.
Our mission is to build a community around Herdade Freixo do Meio that is democratic, inclusive, transparent, autonomous, and resilient, that achieves a constantly improving relationship with natural resources, and that encourages personal development.
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