When Antonio Miguel (grandson, son and nephew of shepherds) began to take care of the sake of Los Olmos, province of Valencia, lived with 64 other ex officio colleagues. Today there are so few that you can count on your fingers. Recently reported in The provinces They are just ten. And at 63 he will soon fall out of the list. His goodbye will aggravate the situation of a falling sector fallen in Valencian lands, where the number of professionals has sunk in just a few decades.
To cut that trend and claim the profession, there are those who are trying to move forward an idea in other regions of Spain: a school of shepherds.
A sector in low hours. Beyond testimonies such as Antonio, data draw a complicated panorama for Valencian grazing. Let’s see. Some estimates estimate that around 1,500 shepherds worked in the community. Today they would be just over 300.
Together, the INE shows that the Valencian territory has lost about 30% of its livestock agricultural territorial capacity throughout the last decade. The problem is not much less exclusive to the Valencian Community (it occurs in other parts of Spain), but it does paint a future with clouds.
A protagonista: help. With that backdrop, a few years ago Paco Rubio, livestock, pastor and technician Alicante, joined other colleagues to create the Mediterranean extensive pastoralism observatory (better known by their acronym: Opem), which basically aspires to “empower” the extensive shepherds and ranchers of the region, give them greater visibility and help them maintain their farms.
Throughout the OPEM years he has carried out several initiatives, but there is one (in a very initial phase) that has reached a special impact: the organization wants to set up a pastor school in the Valencian Community that, hopefully, can expand beyond its community and become a sort of Mediterranean center.
Ni Sencillo, the limited Spain. Its objective is that in the center concepts of veterinarian are taught, future shepherds are taught how they should treat animals, different types of land and their peculiarities and the way of acting before fires, animal attacks or any other unforeseen.
The trade is not simple (cattle must be taken 365 days a year, without exceptions), but offers a job departure, it helps to set population and also has its own horizon, beyond the Spanish field: in Switzerland or Austria professionals are demanded to work during certain months a year.
And at what point are they? The idea is not exactly new. He has been on the table for some years. But Opem has been working on it and especially moving to make it known throughout the region. With the support of the Diputación, he has studied the needs of the territory and organizes informative talks on the “activation of the Valencian School of Pastors”.
His desire, he insists, is “to form new generations of farmers, encourage generational relief and promote a model that combines food production, conservation and environmental sustainability.” In recent months he has talked about her in Vallada, Xàtiva and Tuéjar.
From ideas to classrooms. In a recent interview with The countryRubio acknowledges that he still works ahead to reach the ambitious project to which the OPEM aspires. The objective, of course, is clear: to open in the region of Rincón de Ademuz a school focused on the formation of shepherds with facilities, professionals, sheep and land.
Much of that already have it. To shape it, however, a budget of 600,000 euros would be needed. As for how OPEM would work, the OPEM manager is in favor of a mixed model, with public financing and private management that even allows him to take him to the Balearic Islands.
“There is potential”. “There is interest and there is even structure. And we are seeing that it is profitable. But it is an even more complicated sector than that of agriculture because tradition was lost a little earlier,” he tells The avant -garde Ruth Carbonell, project technician in OPEM.
In its favor the collective has the strategic value of grazing, especially in the rural one, where it helps to set population and keeps the fields clean to prevent forest fires. “We trust that there is a potential of people who would and we would fill in a hole that is not being covered,” says Rubio on the project.
A not so new idea. Although Opem’s idea has generated expectation in the Valencian Community, the truth is that it would not be the first grazing school in Spain. Moreover, from the agency themselves recognize that they are being set in other institutions distributed throughout the country, such as Estive, in Huesca. In the Valencian Community itself courses on grazing and livestock have been offered.
“We are seeing how the models of Aragon and Catalonia work, which are semi -public. In Andalusia there are a school of shepherds, but it is public,” says Rubio. “And then there are private models such as the Basque or Extremadura, where an NGO is responsible and does not receive money from the administration, but a return from who enrolls.”
Images | Manel (Flickr) and Gutifoll (Flickr)
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