My name is Pedro García. My family has always been related to the field. Since I launched the project of Capellanía, I have devoted all my effort to organic farming. In fact, for me it is a life's philosophy. The first years were difficult to deal with as there were few people that knew and valued organic farming. Nowadays, I do not see another way to treat the field apart from the one that my parents taught me to. We started organic farming before any certification body existed in Spain. At the beginning, it was very expensive and bureaucratic to obtain the label. To be able to be certified as organic farmers, external certifications organizations came. Initially, a challenge that we had was to position our products into the market. It was a fight getting the market to appreciate the value-added of our products pesticides and herbicides free. A disadvantage that we had to deal with was in terms of the production. Our production was lower than conventional farmers as we did not dope our trees with chemical fertilizers. With patience, experience, and technology, we found a higher efficiency of natural resources and improved our productivity. In the field, I am responsible for all the employees and status of the farm in general. I distribute the work to the field team who are in charge of harvesting and the maintenance of the field, and the rest of the team handles the fruit in our warehouse. Being part of CrowdFarming gives me the opportunity to explain to the CrowdFarmers our project of family organic farming. In addition, we can send our citrus straight to people without intermediary, direct from the tree to your home. Hence, the CrowdFarmers can enjoy our fresh and tasty products. As well as we believe that receiving comments from your personal experiences with our products is an incentive that will motivate and help us to improve each campaign.

The farm Capellanía is located in Valle del Almanzora, a rural place found in Southeastern Spain, in Almería. Its name comes from the area where it is located “La Capellanía”. Capellanía means religious building, despite not having found any rest of past constructions, there is a belief that there was a church on the farm formerly. The surrounding is characterized by the presence of native species of the Mediterranean mountain such as thyme, rosemary, olive trees… along with other citrus crops that mostly are organic farming. Traditionally, in this region agriculture is the main source of employment and richness. Thanks to the professionalization and innovation that have been implemented, nowadays it is a fundamental area for the development of new generations and settling of rural population. I come from a family of farmers. Since I was 18 years old, I started to develop an agricultural project in La Capellanía, which has ended being my own lifestyle philosophy. At the beginning, we planted a variety of yellow grapefruit (March), and later on an important decision was to change it to our current variety Star Ruby. Star Ruby is a variety more appreciated due to its sweetish taste, high quantity of juice, red pulp and almost seedless. The water of the farm comes from two main sources: our own well and rainwater that is collected in a raft. We are driven to optimize the use of water. We employ a drip irrigation system, along with the use of humidity probes to accurately know the needs of our trees. Depending on the climatology, each tree requires around 12 m3 of water per year. Our farm has been certified as organic since its beginning, 30 years ago. We develop agricultural activities to enhance biodiversity and the environment. Within our work, we highlight the presence of native enemies through biological monitoring of plagues (releases of auxiliary insects), controlling the grass by using strimmer, shredding the waste from pruning and adding it to the farm soil for increasing its organic matter and preserving the humidity. Lastly, the fruits that cannot be sold due to any damage are used as compost in a specific area. The farm generates 2 permanent jobs and 4 temporary jobs, according to the needs. In our warehouse we have a team of 5 people for managing and preparing the orders. We normally always count on the same people for temporary jobs as apart from creating an employment relationship, it also establishes a bond of friendship. The majority of our employees have been working with us from 2 to 10 years. All our workers in the farm are paid according to the collective agreement of the field. We foster a combination of personal and working life by making flexible schedules or giving them days off for personal matters. Our love and effort that we devote to our work in the farm make us feel confident that our grapefruits are of fine quality.