Interview with Marius Rödder about his work on a Spanish organic farm

Marius Rödder spent two months in May and June helping out on an organic farm in the south of Spain. In this interview, he tells us what he did and what motivated him to temporarily swap the office for an orange grove.

Where exactly were you and what did you do there?

I was in the Ricote Valley in the agricultural province of Murcia in the south of Spain. I was looking for new impressions and insights away from the screen. Food has been grown in the Ricote valley for many centuries. The Moors played an important role in the past. They once began to cultivate the valley using sophisticated methods and built canals, terraces and aqueducts, for example. Since then, fruit crops have played an important role in the region. This is also the case on the small Farm La Era de Oxox in the beautiful village of Ojós. Oranges and lemons in particular are grown there on terraced areas on the banks of the Segura River, as well as other fruits such as peaches and apricots. My tasks were very varied, but I mainly harvested oranges and helped with the irrigation of the land. In preparation, the weeds are pruned in the areas, which then act as green manure to supply the soil with nutrients and prevent it from drying out. Wide ‘nests’ are built around the tree trunks with branches, sticks and green cuttings, which also serve to retain moisture in the soil immediately surrounding the tree roots. The water is then channelled section by section onto the surfaces, where it then seeps away quickly and enables the trees to survive the hot, dry summer.

What was the most impressive thing about your time in Spain?

Firstly, there is the landscape, which is really beautiful and very different to northern Germany. The people here – as everywhere in southern Spain – have to deal with completely different temperatures, which of course also characterises the daily rhythm. It determines which work can be done when – especially in the fields, where you are exposed to the sun quite directly. Many aspects of this work and how people deal with each other and with the sometimes scarce resources are very interesting and highly complex. On the one hand, there is great solidarity and a willingness to help among the local people. On the other hand, however, there are also simmering conflicts over the distribution of water. This is particularly the case with those farmers who practise large-scale, highly intensive agriculture outside the comparatively cramped valley and draw a lot of water from the river. The working conditions of people who, as illegal immigrants, are exposed to sometimes cruel exploitation in many businesses were also a topic at the dinner table. When you are in the centre of a region that produces large quantities of fruit and vegetables especially for the German market, that are (too) cheap, such stories have a different impact.

How does your stay influence your work at corsus?

For me, the direct insights and direct experience of agriculture on site are a very valuable addition to my work. Although we also visit farmers from time to time as part of the preparation of life cycle assessments, we mostly model data that we have not collected ourselves on site, but receive from our customers. Getting direct impressions on the farmland and from the producers is therefore not the rule. Being on site not only helps us to understand production processes even better, but also to ask even better questions when collecting data and subsequently modelling it. The fact that corsus as an employer enables its employees to gain this experience on site is therefore particularly valuable in my eyes.