AGROECOLOGY: FINCA TAMAIDE

“We are nothing without a living soil.” (Vandana Shiva).

The Canarina Foundation owns a farm of around 4000 m² in the south of Tenerife at an altitude of 550 metres above sea level. This farm was dedicated to potato cultivation using traditional methods for many years and then fell into disuse. The aim of this regeneration project is to promote the gradual recovery of the soil and the potential ecosystem of the area, which corresponds to the transitions between the high altitudes of the Tabaibal-Cardonal, the thermophilic forests and the thermal pine forests in the south of the island of Tenerife. The aim is to create a productive and edible native forest by designing an agroforestry system based on the principles of agroecology, which will become an agroecological beacon that will serve as a reference in the region and function as a stable, resilient and sustainable production system. The planning technique used was fundamentally inspired by analogue forestry, an ecological restoration tool and school developed by Dr Ranil Senanayake (Sri Lanka), which is defined as a method of creating a silvicultural system that aims to create a tree-dominated ecosystem similar in structure and ecological function to the original ecosystem.

This project is intended to be a space in which not only the ecosystem is restored, but can also promote a change in people and their relationships with each other and the environment. A system in which the community can participate to promote resilience, sustainability and fairer and more egalitarian relationships. We firmly believe that the care and management of the forest will bring us back to who we are: The forest will take care of us and nurture us, because we are the forest.