Hello CrowdFarmer, I'm so proud that my project caught your attention and that you're here reading this. My name's Xabier Mendia, son of Javier Mendia, who - together with his friend Pedro Gumiel - is the manager and co-founder of Gumendi, a project launched in 1992 (when organic farming was practically unheard of). My father and Pedro, who were fruit and vegetable farmers, embarked upon this exciting journey in the midst of an agrochemical boom and decided to produce organic food. This was more than thirty years ago in Sartaguda, a small agricultural village in Navarra. They say that their main motivation was to start growing food again like their parents and grandparents used to; in other words, without using herbicides and chemicals. We call that organic farming now, but back in 1992 only a few people knew about it in Spain. The beginnings were complicated, and they used to store the fruit in the repurposed ground floor of my father's house. Hardly anyone consumed organic products in Spain and sales networks were conspicuous by their absence. They had to go with their first few harvests to Perpignan, France, in order to sell their produce. Fortunately, the demand for our products has kept on growing, as has our project, which now involves about sixty people. I learned so many things from my father and he infected me with his two great passions: agriculture and music. As a result, I'd spend hours and hours on the piano, on the accordion and on the farm. However, when it came to deciding what to study, I chose Law at university, so my professional career initially seemed to veer away slightly from the family business. Despite this, my love for agriculture and my father's hardworking ethics meant that I was always linked to the industry, as I used to provide advice to consumer associations and unions. That was until 2012, when I decided to come back to the family business and help promote Gumendi's growth as a business. Pedro still works at Gumendi and lends me a hand in running the business. My father has decided to enjoy an active retirement and has returned to his full-time origins on the farm that he missed so much at the end of his career, when he was spending more time in the office than out on the land. He finally has time now to help other villagers with their farms, while also rediscovering and replanting seeds of traditional local species, such as the Sartaguda peach. As you can see, my father and Pedro set the bar very high, but they definitely knew how to convey to me all their passion for farming, ecology and the business. With their support and know-how, as well as that of the entire Gumendi team, we're continuing to prosper and do our bit for a greener future.

Gumendi is a project involving several farms and several farmers, so it wouldn't make sense to focus on a single one. To understand our project, we need to look back to 1992, when Javier Mendia and Pedro Gumiel decided to join forces to market the products they grew in the village of Sartaguda. As you know, one challenge for farmers has always been marketing, and after a lot of work, my father and Pedro gradually managed to sell our crops. This appealed to other farmers, so together we formed what we called Agricultural Transformation Societies to market their/our products fairly and honestly. We have several farms in the Ribera de Navarra region, which is a predominantly agricultural area. We grow a wide variety of foods (asparagus, pears, apples, artichokes, tomatoes and others), always organically, pesticide-free and without any sources of contamination. The Ebro river has made these lands so fertile over the years, and although there's a lot of water in the area, we use drip irrigation for the vast majority of our plots to optimise their use. Meanwhile, we use compostable plastics to prevent weeds from stunting the growth of our crops. We only engage in organic farming on our farms. As a rule of thumb (because each year is different), this crop consumes about 1,100 litres of water per hectare. To control pests, we let Mother Nature do her job. We also plant hedges and shrubs that are home to insects and other fauna, so we encourage the appearance of natural predators. The only waste that we manage out on the farm is the lower part of the artichoke, which is cut off in situ and incorporated into the soil as organic matter. Our warehouse has plenty of solar panels, which means that we produce more energy than we use. That's why this year we want to launch an energy storage project, so that we can use it when we can't produce it. About sixty people currently work here at Gumendi. We try to generate activity around organic farming and seek to encourage other farmers to change their way of producing and join us leaving the 'dark side'.