Hello everyone, my name's Carlos Álvarez and I belong to the fourth generation of a family that has been working the la Noria farm for years. However, I've not always been a farmer, as I graduated in Industrial Engineering and managed large manufacturing companies until 2005, when I realised that I wanted to take over the family farm. However, the social recognition for my career scared me a bit and I was hesitant about becoming a farmer. That was until in 2010 the circumstances were on my side and I made my dream come true by leaving absolutely everything behind to do what I really like and what I'm passionate about: the countryside and our farm. I spent all my childhood and youth at Finca La Noria with my family, always enjoying and helping with anything that I could. I knew that at some point I'd come back to my roots and continue with the work that my father did all his life. I changed suits and ties, the office and the city centre for jeans and boots, the countryside and nature. At first, everything was new to me, I knew practically nothing about the crops on the farm, so I had to surround myself with people who knew when to plant, when to water and when each product was in season. Meanwhile, I complicated their lives with all the organic farming regulations, which they'd never heard of. The demand for our products was very high from day one, because it was a very innovative approach in Spain and really helped us overcome all the problems and difficulties we had on the farm. A few years later, I was able to 'rescue' my little sister, Natuca, from the same situation. She was working as a lawyer, but now manages the business line of our store in Zaragoza and the other shops. Meanwhile, my wife Isabel, an economist, is in charge of accounts and business development for sales to the final customers. Today, I'm in charge of managing production on the farm and marketing the product earmarked for manufacturing, with the help of seventeen other people. I'm fortunate to have a fully motivated and passionate team out on the farm, in packing, at our stores or in the office. Needless to say, at BioTrailla we treat our employees as they deserve and we improve the working conditions required by the collective agreement. Buñuel is a village in Navarra of about 3,000 inhabitants whose main economic activity has always been agriculture and livestock, bolstered in recent years with other industrial activities. This deep-rooted agricultural tradition has favoured the transfer of knowledge from generation to generation, which has given our team a huge amount of knowledge to grow crops of an exceptional quality. The farm never sleeps and the plants need our love and care every single day of the year. And we're happy to be there because it's a very rewarding job being one with nature. We start at dawn and finish every day at sunset. The days go by very quickly, as do the weeks and the months. And we're really happy doing what we do.

Finca La Noria is a family farm located in Buñuel (Navarra, Spain), right on the banks of the River Ebro and about fifteen kilometres from Tudela. I don't know where the name La Noria comes from and I've researched it many times. It was my great-grandmother Euphrasia who, in 1914, began to give shape to the farm by growing almond trees (which we still have) and converting it into an irrigated farm with water from the Imperial Canal of Aragon. This farm covers 120 hectares and we grow about eighty different products, including fruits, vegetables, cereals, legumes and nuts. All the land is organically farmed with areas dedicated to flowers, a spring water reservoir, and ornamental trees along some paths. The farm is limited by a road and by the Imperial Canal of Aragon, and on the other side there are fields belonging to other farmers outside our family. We've created an ecosystem on the farm that helps us secure the natural balance that crops need. We have three pollination stations with beehives, we take care of birds of prey with posts and nesting boxes, and we have shelters for insects and almost two kilometres of flower beds for them. We're currently creating protected islands as reservoirs for beneficial wildlife, based on native herbs and plants. Ducks and other aquatic species frequent our reservoir, which is filled with crystal-clear water from a natural spring. We also have chickens and sheep, which in addition to giving us eggs, provide us with fertilisers and cut our waste production to zero by feeding on weeds, crop remains, and any substandard crops from the packaging room. We love to observe and select the best seeds from our favourite plants that we keep in our own seed bank for later use in the seedbed for next year's plantings. With all these actions, we base our management on the circular economy. Our trademark BioTrailla was created when we became an organic farming company to distribute our products to homes, restaurants, shops and markets. But it's not just a brand, it's our lifestyle and our way of protecting the environment and nature. We use biodegradable materials, we make our own compost with manure and any substandard crops, we control the use of water through drip irrigation, we plant trees to repopulate the land and, in short, we treat nature as a living being. One of the biggest difficulties in terms of crop management is the control of unwanted weeds. We do this through stubble cultivation, crop rotation, the use of chickens, and the application of mulch with a black biodegradable material similar to potato plastic, which has three functions: (i) to prevent the evaporation of irrigation water; (ii) to increase the temperature of the soil with the sun so that the plants grow better; and (iii) to prevent the germination of weeds so that they don't compete with our plants.