My name's Mara Ferrez and I'd like to tell you the story of my family. When I met my husband Fran, we were young and had very few resources to start a business. However, we were both aware that with hard work and imagination, we could achieve huge goals. I was working at a large company that distributed fruit and vegetables. Meanwhile, Fran was a delivery driver, salesman and someone really keen to learn about agriculture. After being made unemployed, he started working as a cucumber picker with the man who would later become his business partner. But this experience wasn't accidental... he used it to learn all the information needed to launch his own project. After a few months, and after training as a "young farmer", we invested our limited resources into buying our own farm, which meant that out dream started to take shape. The beginnings of the company were complicated: without money, without any leisure time, and with everything being set aside to make the investment. I remember the time when there weren't any batteries left at home as we were using them for the head torches so that we could work when there was no light. It was hard, but at the same time very exciting. Passion and motivation are our mottos, and that's how we live our lives every day at home! Everyone has their own role in the company; for example, I'm the head of operations. I like managing teams and resources. That's why I'm in charge of organising our employees and making them implement the decisions that we plan. What's more, I give support to the workers and I actively work with them out on the farm. Fran likes to call me the 'fixer'. Fran is also the creative mind. He's always one step ahead of things, marking the path to follow so that the business keeps up with all the latest developments. He's in charge of defining strategies, and particularly of making the company grow with new projects. It was also Fran who decided to steer the company towards a more sustainable position, after listening to the concerns of our daughter María. She has studied environmental issues and considers herself a 'Fridays For Future' girl, which is an international student movement that in 2018 started to protest against global warming and climate change. We have many debates at home about the future of the planet, our habits and our individual responsibilities. This is when we decided to take action and do our bit for the environment. And why am I telling you this story? When I first heard about CrowdFarming, I instantly realised that it's a project full of 'passion and motivation', just like ours. I'm so happy to know that there are so many people like you supporting causes as ethical and intrepid as this one. So, I'd like to end by thanking CrowdFarming for its commitment to revolutionising agriculture, and also our family, as we're now closer to a reality where everything is possible.

We've called our organic farming project Alhambra Tropical, in homage to our history and to all the local farmers who that have shaped today's agricultural culture in Granada. We're committed to their legacy, and we wanted our project to preserve these hallmarks. Our plots are in the area of Puntalón (Motril). This is part of the Motril plain, which has a long agricultural tradition of the cultivation of sugar cane and crops such as potatoes and beans. This highly fertile area first welcomed workers in the 1950s to farm the land. Many families from inland Spain, where resources were scarcer, migrated in search of a job opportunity in our rich and prosperous land. Today, there are farms that are highly specialised in all kinds of vegetables and tropical crops, as well as leaf crops (spinach, pointed cabbage, endive, onions, etc.). We've always specialised in the residue-free cultivation of cherry tomatoes, but now we've decided to diversify our activity with the production of organic papayas and dragon fruit. Motril, our town, is a place with many job opportunities. We receive water from snowmelt coming from the Sierra Nevada, which forms a huge plain with excellent agricultural characteristics. There are many families that live off the land or work at related companies in our town. What's more, we're home to one of the most important freight ports in our region. The history of the farm is closely related to my partner. He, like me, wasn't a farmer, but we always dreamt of having our own plantations. First of all, we decided to educate ourselves about farming while gaining experience as workers at agricultural companies. Then, we devised a plan which involved risky investments, but allowed us to make our dream come true. We're entrepreneurs now and we do our best to do an excellent job at the forefront of the latest agricultural trends, all from a sustainability perspective. The water for our farms comes from the Sierra Nevada, running along the Guadalfeo River to the Mediterranean Sea. There are two dams that store part of the flow, which is then used by various irrigation communities like ours. We use a drip irrigation system, which fully optimises all the water. In our history as farmers, we've always used practices related to organic farming. We've managed to grow residue-free tomatoes, which isn't the easiest task as they're plants that are very vulnerable to pests and diseases. With the Alhambra Tropical project, we've taken a further step to certifying all tropical crop plantations under the EU standard for organic farming. On the whole, we still use no phytosanitary products, we remove grass with brush cutters, and we use biological control methods to prevent possible pests. On top of all this, we use the sun as an energy resource. As for our collaborators, we know their needs at first hand as we were once employees of the same companies. That's why we like to be empathetic and attend to all the questions that our employees ask us, thereby making their lives easier. Of course, their salary is in accordance with the law, but they also receive incentives for production. However, the most important thing for us is the flexibility and trust that we offer them, as well as the strictest respect for their working hours. And if they work longer than they should, they get overtime. Nine employees work in our project, who have been with us from between three and fifteen years. As for waste, papaya is a very versatile fruit that is given many uses. In our area there are several companies that produce by-products such as jams and juices, so anything that fails to meet our quality standards is allocated to these products.