Hello! My name's Loreto and I'm 21 years old, the youngest of three sisters, and I'm going to present this project to you. I'm from Valencia and when I was seventeen years old, I went off to Madrid to do a degree and enjoy new experiences. Although it sounds like a cliché, I love to travel and experience situations that are only found in different countries and cultures. In fact, I even spent eight months studying in Colombia. When I finished my degree, I was lucky enough to work for four years at a Big Four (accounting) with a team of incredible people. In mid-2019, I started to have concerns about my father's work and although I mentioned this to him, I was very happy at my company and I wasn't ready to give everything up. He had the idea that I could combine both things, so I started working on the farm at the weekends. Although I didn't see the point at the time, it was the best decision we could have made, as it confirmed what I already thought: I needed a change and I loved working the land. As a result, my 'departure' from the company and from Madrid wasn't a sudden change, but a very reasoned choice, and it was exactly what I needed. It was very hard for me to leave my family behind. Now I'm here, my adventure is beginning with CrowdFarming and all of you. Since I started in agriculture, I've always thought that the industry needs more visibility and that consumers need to know about the fruit and veg that they see in supermarkets. We need to be more aware of what we eat, how it's produced, and with which products. And, above all, we need to reduce the consumption of processed food. That's why when CrowdFarming called and explained how it works, I realised that we had common goals and I didn't have a second thought about telling our story and taking part in the project. It's impossible now for me to spend all the time that I'd like with the farm, as I need to combine everything with other projects. Although this is the current situation, I'm juggling around other projects so that in the (very!) near future, I can spend 100% of my time on it. However, I'm extremely happy with the togetherness of our team. And thanks to technological advances, the technicians and I can be in touch around the clock. We joined CrowdFarming because we wanted to present our work to people, making them part of the evolution of kiwis, and - above all - showcasing the team that makes our kiwis reach your table.

Our farm is called La Finca de la Abuela in honour of our great-grandmother. When our father was eleven years old, he was orphaned and had to work in agriculture to help his family out financially. The Sanchis family used to refer to the field as La Finca de La Abuela (literally, Grandma’s Farm) which is the name we still use almost two hundred years later out of tradition and in honour of Francisca. These fields were originally rice fields, which were later planted with orange trees. Ultimately, and due to the local climate and a desire to diversify, we decided to replace the old orange trees with kiwi plants in 2007. Our farm is in the area of La Coma in Picassent, a traditional farming town with more than 21,000 inhabitants, and is surrounded by other kiwi and orange plantations and fascinating attractions such as the Espioca tower. As I mentioned earlier, this has been a family-run farm for more than two hundred years and our father started working the land over sixty years ago. And today, it still produces fruit thanks to all our hard work. When we were kids, we used to go for a stroll through the fields every Saturday while my father was checking on everything that had happened during the week, but it wasn't until 2019 that I started working on the farm. And we still go for those strolls! We drip irrigate with water from the Acequia Real del Júcar channel that meets organic standards. What's more, there are annual inspections to check the quality of the water. Years ago, the farm was flood irrigated, which meant that the field was literally flooded. However, this cost almost three times as much as what we spend now with drip irrigation (approximately 12.8 cubic metres per tree per year). We're advocates of sustainable agriculture so that the fields can stay alive generation after generation. We gained the organic farming certificate in 2018, which means that since 2015 we haven't used any herbicides, pesticides, chemical products or environmentally damaging products. We cut the grass in the dry season and shred it, leaving it as a natural cover to prevent more grass from growing and to turn into compost over time. One person works throughout the year on the farm, helped at busy times (such as pruning or harvesting) by a further three people, all of them in better working conditions than those set by the collective agreement. Our daily work is very varied and everyone contributes what they can. And thanks to our work and a great deal of communication, we make headway every day. There are very few substandard kiwi fruits, so any 'surplus' is used by us or our team members. What's more, any fruits that remain on the tree and later fall to the ground are used as food and future organic matter for the soil.