Time for information, culture and education

– A group of friends gather to sing at sunset, next to the banks of the Almançor River, in Montemor-o-Novo

The Alentejo has not seen such an ecocide for a hundred years. Public money and water from the Alqueva River water the growth of industrial monocultures. There are those who protect the wealth that remains and there are those who sow futures among the harbingers of the desert.

- Photographer José Manuel Rodrigues travels through the monocultures of Baixo Alentejo in an old jeep.

“Now they only visit us to film the misfortune”, sings Celina da Piedade, with Tais Quais. “In the fields around the town, neither poppies nor wheat fields / The modern olive grove advances ever further”, continues Moda dos Enjeitados. It is in Baleizão that the accordionist and composer has roots.

“We noticed that the intensive olive and almond groves are expanding day by day, and there are now walnut groves, right up to the roadsides,” he says, after one of the summer concerts he gave throughout the Alentejo. Another example is the sumptuous Cinco Reis beach, opened last year on a reservoir in the Alqueva subsystem. “There are intensive olive groves almost all the way to the water. Not only does it not look at all healthy, it’s also a bit disturbing.”

The rapid change in the landscape gives Celina a “mixed, bittersweet feeling.” “I listen to my mother and the older people who feel the joy of seeing the fields finally yielding and being used. One side of me is happy that the land is producing and there is work. On the other, I feel that it is an extreme. Intensive agriculture that will deplete the soil and resources, pollute the water table, and damage the ecosystem. It makes me sad and angry. And so much labor coming from outside is not received in an open manner. It is a very high price to pay on a human and environmental level.”

– Artist Celina da Piedade watches the landscape transform around Baleizão and Beringel.

Alqueva, from Arabic al-qewê, “desert land”. Today, this is the name of the largest artificial lake in Western Europe. Two thousand kilometres of canals and pipes, pumping stations and dams carry water to irrigate 120 thousand hectares of land, which could soon be 200 thousand. This is the equivalent of 20 cities in Lisbon.

It was almost 20 years ago that the dam's floodgates closed, in the largest public investment ever made in agriculture in the country. Amid protests from environmentalists, a long-held desire to irrigate the Alentejo interior on a large scale was realized. For the agribusiness giants, it was the Eldorado: subsidized water, in a vast territory devoid of both people and planning that would require special respect for the ecology of the place. They made copy in Andalusia, Easter in Alentejo.

In an investigation published in the magazine Saturday, Paulo Barriga reports on the concentration of land in the region. In 10 years, 70% of the agricultural land in Alqueva has changed hands, and the price of land has increased fivefold. Today, just six groups own or manage more than 65% of the region's olive groves, led by Elaia and De Prado.

“Everything is planted, whether in the canopy or in the hedge. In the hedge, there is the advantage of optimizing resources with technology. It is very important to be efficient in harvesting to improve the quality of the olive oil and profitability,” explains Pedro Lopes, director for Portugal at De Prado and also president of Olivum.

Founded in 2014, Olivum represents companies in the sector, 42 thousand hectares of olive groves, and oil mills, the number of which in the region has fallen by more than half in the last 20 years. Of the 15 members of the governing bodies, 14 are men. Since 2019, the association has published the study “Alentejo: Leading Modern International Olive Growing”, carried out by two consultancy firms. The region is presented as having “the best characteristics for the development of modern olive growing” in the world and Portugal as having the potential to become the third largest producer of olive oil in the world in the next decade.

– From Beja, Pedro Lopes and Gonçalo Almeida Simões from Olivum – Southern Olive Growers Association defend the role of companies in the sector.

No website From De Prado, the Spanish agri-food giant says it wants to buy 2 hectares of land each year: in Portugal, California and Chile. On the huge estate south of Beja where it is based, machines uproot, one by one, young olive trees planted in an intensive system, to now plant olive trees in hedges, in a super-intensive system, which allows mechanical harvesting, or almond groves, a crop that requires 50% more water than olive groves.

In 2017, De Prado made headlines after destroying nearly two dozen archaeological sites to plant three thousand hectares of intensive almond plantations. Pedro Lopes declined to comment on the incident and said that “anyone could be wrong”.

The sites were marked in the Municipal Master Plan of Beja. When it learned of the threat, the Directorate-General for Heritage asked the company to stop the work. The machines continued. The “mistake” cost a bridge, an aqueduct and a villa Romans, remains from the Chalcolithic, Iron Age, Bronze Age, Medieval and Modern periods.

But this is far from an isolated case. “We have warned the owners or developers by registered letter and receipt on more than one occasion, but they have systematically ignored us,” says Ana Paula Amendoeira, regional director of Culture for Alentejo. “It is because they really want to destroy the area, with the aim of planting the largest possible area.”

During the public works of the Alqueva Dam and associated infrastructures, the largest archaeological operation ever carried out in Portugal took place, which revolutionised our knowledge of the Alentejo. Over the last five years, with the agro-industry tap opened, helping the threatened heritage has become one of the most important and thankless tasks of the DRCA.

“Most people don’t realise what’s happening. Planting like this involves a lot of land preparation. In an area of ​​two or three thousand hectares, the level of destruction is massive. Trees are cut down, dry stone walls, which have been there for centuries and require brutal technical knowledge, watercourses, hills, mills, water wheels and archaeological remains are completely destroyed,” says Ana Paula Amendoeira. “Nothing is left, as if it were a lunar landscape.”

Several complaints and criminal charges have been filed at the DRCA headquarters in the historic center of Évora. To date, no administrative offenses have been committed.

For the Master in Restoration of Architectural and Landscape Heritage, “we are all losing”. “When megalithic monuments, Roman towns and bridges, and prehistoric settlements are destroyed in a savage and ignorant manner, in an anti-civilizational attitude, what we are doing is preventing those sites and knowledge from ever entering our memory. Not destroying things that belong to everyone is a principle that everyone understands”.

“It is absolutely paradoxical: the heritage that we have been destroying with this agricultural model teaches us how agriculture began and consolidated itself here. For agriculture, it should be practically sacred,” says Ana Paula. And this knowledge, she argues, can teach us a lot in the current moment of destruction of the planet’s resources. “We are making a brutal break with the past, saying that what is behind us is of no interest to us, we are only interested in promoting the culture of planned obsolescence and the rapid deterioration of everything. Including the land… It is destruction in pure loss. What this allows is huge private profit, which goes directly into this chain of obsolescence.”

It is also paradoxical that a 21st century water project should serve to erase ancestral knowledge about water use. “Our territory has always been water-scarce, which is why knowledge and technology have been developed over millennia, which were greatly reinforced by the Arabs. Waterwheels, wells, cisterns, canals… With an arrogant attitude, we are unlearning, wasting and destroying the vestiges of this wisdom.”

– Ana Paula Amendoeira punctuates her speech by banging her hand on the table of the Regional Directorate of Culture in Évora, from where she has been fighting against the destruction of heritage by the expansion of new industrial monocultures.

As traces remain on earth, there is wisdom that remains in the bark of cork oaks, in the verses of cante, in the gestures of people.

In this “land of few people and few people with land”, José Manuel Rodrigues witnessed a profound relationship between man and nature. “There were many areas that had never been touched by man, where nature had been like this for thousands of years. There were people who were true encyclopedias, they knew everything: the plants, the history, everything orally. The people had very little education – the education they had, which was very strong, was their connection to nature.”

“It was no coincidence that the Alentejo people created one of the most perfect ecosystems – ecosystems created by the hand of man – that exist: the montado”, says Celina da Piedade enthusiastically. “It has such a balance that it is self-sustaining and self-regenerating. This says a lot about this connection to the Earth and this intrinsic respect that is at the root of the culture of the Alentejo people.”

Celina listens to Alentejo singing and observes examples of this connection in her mother’s daily life. “She recycles everything, without caring what recycling is. She uses eggshells for the land, food scraps for the neighbour’s chickens, she has a whole network of neighbours with whom she exchanges as much food as possible, without having to go to the supermarket… We are talking about generations who went hungry, and this was necessary for day-to-day survival.”

«We also have to accept that everything has its time. We can’t go to work in the sun, or at night. We have to accept the rhythms. These natural logics that demonstrated great respect for the ecosystem. Seen from this perspective, this intensive agriculture disrespects all this rhythm, all these cycles.»

From the Castle of Montemor-o-Novo, the setting sun illuminates the montado, which is still prevalent in this part of the Alentejo, and ancient olive groves that are still struggling to find anyone to harvest them. “The Alentejo landscape is incredibly rich, and the most striking feature is the montado system. These silvopastoral systems, with trees and pasture underneath, were quite common until the Middle Ages and today there are very few of them in Europe. They are extremely complex and of great interest from a biodiversity point of view”, explains Teresa Pinto-Correia.

The researcher at MED – the Mediterranean Institute for Agriculture, Environment and Development at the University of Évora – has been reporting a silent process: every year around 5 hectares of montado disappear. “If the montado disappears, then there will be nothing left.”

“If today we have to produce lettuce, we produce lettuce; if tomorrow we have to produce coriander, we will produce coriander; if we have to produce olive oil, we will produce olive oil,” says Pedro Lopes. “The farmer, the investor, the entrepreneur, is in agreement with what he can get profitably from his land, by taking care of it.”

“What we want is to produce more and more in less and less space. Given the price per hectare of agricultural land with access to water in Portugal, investors are not interested in seeing their investment wasted. The land has to be looked after and treated well. No one is suicidal enough to buy land only to destroy it”, argues Gonçalo Almeida Simões. The current CEO of Olivum was a representative of the agro-industry and then a representative of the Portuguese government to the European institutions in Brussels. He presents a study from this year by the Alqueva Infrastructure Development Company (EDIA), which concludes that olive cultivation is “perfectly adapted” to Alqueva, has “low water requirements” and is, for the region, an “added economic and social asset”.

For Teresa Pinto-Correia, the study has little data. “We do not have the basic information to understand what some of the conclusions are based on. This is such a serious and important issue for the country that we need qualified and proven information to be able to discuss it.”

According to the researcher, the real cost of water being used for irrigation is much higher than what is being charged. “It is obviously a very good deal for companies.”

«In our Mediterranean climates, already clearly subject to climate change, water is and will be an extremely scarce resource. It would be more interesting and sustainable to apply public effort and investment in small irrigation schemes, which would help to provide sustainability to the montado or to dryland systems, which are naturally better adapted to the ecosystem.»

Meanwhile, a survey by the ZERO association, presented in August this year, mapped the land converted to olive groves, almond groves, vineyards and other crops under intensive irrigation in Beja. In this municipality alone, it recorded the destruction of 18 temporary Mediterranean ponds and more than a thousand hectares of montado, protected habitats. ZERO denounces the “public subsidy of environmental destruction”: many of these projects benefit from funds from the Rural Development Programme.

“Because mechanical work is easier, the riparian galleries [habitats along watercourses] in areas where intensive olive and almond groves have been established have been completely destroyed,” says Teresa. “In principle, you can’t even touch the watercourses; they are part of the public water domain. Riparian galleries are not just for aesthetics: they play a fundamental role in the functioning of a landscape from the point of view of water flow, preventing erosion and maintaining corridors for biodiversity.”

The researcher regrets that the public investment in Alqueva did not include the planning and management of the associated territory. “Agriculture must be integrated into the landscape and ecosystem of the Alentejo, to create an agricultural mosaic and maintain diversity and balance. The conversion into very large areas of monoculture is a huge simplification of the landscape, which has problems from an identity point of view, but above all from the point of view of the lack of biodiversity. It will cause problems for crops, because pest and disease control will be much more difficult. They have to be treated with phytopharmaceuticals, and this will cause problems with water quality and with the investment needed to maintain the crop. We have already seen in Spain that in terms of soil and pests there is a major failure from an ecological point of view.”

In the words of biologist Paulo Pereira, the advent of agricultural engineering brought with it a certain presumption of human beings believing that they control all processes. «In any type of intensive agricultural system, there is this idea that the only thing that interests us is what we have to produce. Everything else is competition to be eliminated. This is like connecting our production to the machine. As if we had a Covid patient connected to a respirator. Only with dripping water, fertilizers, tractors, and spraying insecticides and herbicides all year round can we maintain the crop. We are creating a zombie, which has no autonomy outside of human care.»

– Researcher Teresa Pinto Correia analyses the transformation of the Alentejo landscape from the top of Montemor-o-Novo castle.

The irrigation of Alqueva drips today over the wound of an older ecocide.

Inspired by Italian fascism, the Wheat Campaign of the 30s and 40s was the project of the military dictatorship and the Estado Novo aimed at achieving self-sufficiency in Portugal. The uncontrolled expansion of cereal monocultures at the time meant the almost total disappearance of natural forests and the exhaustion of the soils of the Alentejo.

Like the Alqueva project, the Wheat Campaign did not challenge large estates or land rights, and made agriculture more subordinate than ever to the chemical and agricultural machinery industries (between 1927 and 1934, national fertilizer production doubled).

Where Salazar saw Portugal’s granary, Olivum sees Europe’s oil mill. Railways supplied coastal cities, where the consumption of white bread was growing. Today, trucks supply European cities, where the consumption of olive oil and almond milk is growing. The state used to subsidize clearing; today it subsidizes irrigation. Where the “wheat of our land” was praised, today it praises virgin olive oil “one of the best in the world”.

In the 50s, when the Wheat Campaign was accepted as an economic, social and ecological setback for the region, the Estado Novo presented the Alentejo Irrigation Plan. It was the precursor to the Alqueva dam.

Beyond the 100-metre-high wall and one billion cubic metres of concrete, the Guadiana continues to wind its way south. One hundred kilometres downstream, high on the right bank, stands the wall of Mértola Castle.

The Horta da Malhadinha, a hundred thousand times smaller than the area irrigated by Alqueva, is home to the Mértola Agroecology Centre. “It is a place where we plant, test, demonstrate good agroecological practices, and train others to join this network of local agroecologists”, explains Pedro Nogueira, from the Terra Sintrópica association. “We need to have successful experiments that show what possibilities there are for farming in an area with such poor soils, a lack of water and high temperatures”.

After a year and a half of experimentation, there is enthusiasm. “We can see an abundant system and, yes, it is clear here that this is a possible path: a space that is productive but that can at the same time regenerate itself and reduce the levels of water being discharged.”

“In syntropic agriculture we work with succession and stratification. Basically, it’s about planning in time and space. And it’s incredible to see how the system grows, even in this climate! You think it would be burned by frost or sun, or dried out by lack of water,” says Laura Green.

“There is no such thing as ready-made knowledge. Everything has to be adapted to the context. And that’s why we need to experiment. To make mistakes. To have a space to share this knowledge that is being acquired”, explains the young woman, who has just finished a valuable school year working on a school garden project in the municipality – an invitation from a young age to these practices and these perspectives. “Understanding what alternatives exist, in line with the ecology of the place, with a community, with a scale of the possible”, adds Pedro, who left his career as a landscape architect in Porto to settle in Mértola.

Here, where the Ribeira de Oeiras meets the Guadiana, biophysical desertification and human desertification converge. The neighbouring municipalities of Mértola and Alcoutim are the municipalities with the lowest population density in the country. If the inhabitants of Mértola were to spread out across the municipality, each would have more than 5 square kilometres to themselves.

“We are on the front line of climate change, in a climate that is already classified as semi-arid, on a path that leads to the desert that is already looming. We have very poor and degraded soils, with very low fertility, where it is not uncommon to have plantations of trees that are 20, 30, 40 years old and still remain almost dwarf in height,” says Pedro.

They take on the challenge together: to get people to stay in the territory, and for the purpose that keeps them there to be precisely the regenerative need of the territory. To regenerate, but also to produce. To create an agroecological transition together.

If it is from here that people like archaeologist Cláudio Torres have contributed to understanding and healing our relationship with the past, today a whole “Laboratory of the Future” is being woven throughout the municipality of Mértola. It is like a hat, opened by the strategic vision of women like Rosinda Pimenta, councillor of the Mértola City Council, and Marta Cortegano, president of the Guadiana Valley Business Association. In the shadow of the hat grows an entire ecosystem of projects: the local food network of Mértola; the Hortas Floresta in schools; the PREC – Regenerative Process in Progress, a small café, grocery store, fruit shop selling local products; the Therapeutic Gardens; “De Boca em Boca – stories to nourish communities”, a cultural project to reactivate the act of storytelling in the community, in partnership with the Senior University.

“In a place with so many difficulties, creating a laboratory to test possibilities is very much in line with the current situation in the world,” says Pedro. “There is a huge imbalance between this increasingly densely populated coastline and an increasingly depopulated interior. What possibilities are there for us to review these practices and create new central areas where we thought were just peripheries?”

– In Mértola, Pedro Nogueira, from the Terra Sintrópica Association, describes the emergence of a regenerative experience that could inspire an agroecological transition in the Alentejo.

“What are the prospects for crops to appear in Alqueva? Whatever the consumer wants to consume is what the farmer will have to offer,” says Gonçalo Almeida Simões. “The farmer’s orientation is always in terms of market interest and consumer interest. And the consumer is all of us.”

“We’re not going to uproot all of these olive groves,” says Teresa Pinto-Correia, but compensation mechanisms should be created. “For example, anyone who plants 100 hectares of olive groves must maintain 10 hectares of ecological area. Whether it’s patches or corridors, woodlands, reinforcing riparian galleries… To stop erosion processes and enable ecological recovery and soil regeneration.”

Ana Paula Amendoeira acknowledges how difficult it has been to defend archaeological heritage. “It takes up a lot of our energy, we have to fight every day. And although we have lost many times, we have not given up.” In an unprecedented initiative to protect the remaining heritage, the DRCA proposed last year that two thousand megalithic monuments in the Alentejo be classified as a group of national interest. If they are classified, their destruction will be considered a public crime. “We have a major crusade here. We really need an echo. And the arts have a very important contribution to make.”

José Manuel Rodrigues continues along the road, keeping a watchful eye. “Over time, I’m more interested in getting to the essence of things than documenting them. What I’m photographing is starting to become more important than me,” he confesses. The photographer feels that the silent disasters happening in various parts of the Alentejo – from vineyards to the solar panel park in Cercal, from quarries to greenhouses on the coast – “are, after all, the same thing.” The “Natureza morta” project promises to “stop being a photography project and become a project of struggle. I would like the exhibition to be more of a cry. The problem is so serious that I have to fight.”

Celina da Piedade  reveals a new project – and his enthusiasm for it. It’s called “Um” and is an initiative of the Rota do Guadiana Association, the Musibéria centre and the municipality of Serpa. Through music, the aim is to bring together local communities and migrants, many of whom have come to work on monoculture plantations. “It’s very difficult to reach migrants, who often live isolated on their own farms. The dream would be to create a small multicultural and multigenerational orchestra, which would include migrants and residents, and would combine repertoires. For us all to learn music from Bangladesh or Pakistan. And make them feel more welcome. We all have to be good neighbours, put ourselves in other people’s shoes, shorten distances!”

Pedro Nogueira says he is aware of the challenge of testing futures in Mértola. “More than a project, it is a process. Plants take time to grow. These things take time, so we all need to be generous. Creating networks is a challenge. But they are taking shape, and that gives us hope. We have a long way to go. And the more people who come forward and become partners, the better!”