The Global Foundation Nature leads from Palencia a national project for the recovery of local crops of leguminosas in the Network Nature 2000

The Global Foundation Nature leads from Palencia the recovery and seeds of leguminosas with a project of four years, funded by the ministry of Environingingment, in collaboration with the agriculturalists in spaces of Network Nature 2000 and Zones of Special Protection for the Birds (ZEPA). The practice of these traditional crops brakes, to trial of the researchers, the loss of genetic heritage and benefits to the last of populations of birds esteparias.

The general aims of the project are the fixation of population in included regions or aledañas to the Network Nature 2000, the productive diversification to favour the competitiveness, the learning of agriculturalists for the recovery of crops differentiated that they make possible to occupy new niches of market, the brake to the degradation of a lot of singular habitats of the Network Nature 2000 and the creation of zones tampon (buffer zones) in the surroundings of lagunas esteparias.

The presentation of the project has taken place today in the ship of Global Nature of Sources of Nava, place palentina where has centralised the cleaning and packaging of all the productions of leguminosas of Castile and Leon and Castile-La Mancha.

Ship of seeds. Photo: Global Nature.

In this ship stores the production of both regions, clean and packs . From here it realises besides the available distribution and of seed and, in brief, will be available the sale through the web of the Global Foundation Nature. In this second year of project the production of leguminosas has reached to 120.000 kilos, and has had 100 agriculturalists in Castile-La Mancha and near of 200 in Castile and Leon.

In words of Eduardo of Miguel, director-manager of Global Nature, “the organisations conservacionistas are allied of the agricultural sector, since this project contributes to the afianzamiento of the rural population, the increase in the agricultural incomes, without forgetting that besides it favours the fixation of carbon in floors to mitigate the action of the gases of effect invernadero (GEI)”.

In Castile and Leon the production of legumbre is of the varieties garbanzo pedrosillano and lentil pardina. One of the agriculturalists that is producing in the frame of this project, Jesús Sendino, affirms that “cultivate inside this initiative is better because it supposes an alternative to the sunflower and other cereals”. “Although there is lower production, is of greater quality”, adds the agriculturalist. The forecasts in the frame of the project for Castile and Leon in 2012 are the crop of 100 hectares of garbanzo pedrosillano and the same surface for crop of lentil pardina.

Legumes Framed in the project. Photo: Global Nature.

In concrete, the spaces where cultivate the leguminosas are the ZEPA Nava-Fields North and Nava-Fields South, where cultivates lentil pardina and garbanzo pedrosillano in Castile and Leon; and the ZEPA Humedales de la Mancha, where produces the Spanish lentil, a part of this production in ecological crop. In the Canarian Community, the crops realised in the islands of Tenerife and La Palma come from of the recovery of agricultural seeds of leguminosas like the Jewish “lard“or the Jewish ”mantle of the Virgin”, as well as the Canarian lentil, all very scarce species and that still find to the edge of his disappearance like crops.

Of way more specific, the project foresees to reach other aims, like the recovery and increase of the surface of general crop of leguminosas in the areas of pilot work, the recovery and increase of the surface of crop of local varieties of leguminosas abandoned or whose utilisation found very restricted, the rescue and cataloging of new agricultural varieties present venues in the included territories in the field of performance of the project and his incorporation to banks of germoplasma, the increase of the value added for the agriculturalist in crops of leguminosas in the areas of pilot work, the creation of places of work for youngsters and women in the sector of the commercialisation and promotion of these products and increase the diversification paisajística and of habitat in natural spaces of high ecological value.

Likewise, looks for generate a greater availability of resources tróficos for the local fauna, especially for the birds esteparias and, therefore, improvement of these populations and of the environingingmental quality of the surroundings, what redundará in the tourist attraction of these regions, create a mark differentiated for the leguminosas of quality produced in the surroundings of the Network Nature 2000, and boost the diffusion and commercialisation of other products of the zone by means of the creation of points of sale that include said products.