Madrid (EFE).- Working in relation to nature, not against it, is the underlying message of the report on regenerative agriculture “Living Soils” by Televisión Española, its screenwriter, Marisol Soto, explained to EFE on Wednesday.
The team, also made up of Eduardo Laplaza García (director) and Francesc Tomas (director), will receive the 2023 King of Spain International Award for Environmental Journalism this Thursday in Madrid.
“When we found out that we had received this award, it was a joy,” because it can give more “visibility” to a report that contains “positive” information, a proposal to “get ahead,” Soto said.
Report broadcast on the program “El escarabajo verde”
It was broadcast a year ago in the program “El escarabajo verde” of the second chain (La2) of Spanish state television, a channel with a minority audience, although this report has registered an audience above average, it has been “very well welcomed”.
“I had been following the trail of certain farmers and ranchers who were changing their management for some time,” said Soto. I even read books that were published after their experience over the years and I saw that there was a story to tell and that in our program, focused on the environment and the relationship with the environment, that story had a perfect place and had to be made visible.” .
They avoid conventional production systems and seek to “regenerate soil fertility that has been lost.”
“There is increasing interest in the environment. We are aware that we are in a time when we need to change our relationship with the environment”, Soto stressed.
This program, “The green beetle”, touches on issues that interest people, the agricultural and livestock sector and the research sector are “especially interested” in seeing what can be done in agricultural and livestock management to “reverse the situation ”, not only in Spain, but throughout the world.
“Living dreams”, the story of professionals who decide to change agricultural practices
“Living Soils” tells the story of certain professionals who have decided to change agricultural practices.
“They have stopped plowing, for example, they use vegetable covers. And, above all, they are focused on recovering the fertility of the soil that they have lost with conventional management”. They are not new farmers or ranchers, but come from several generations, he assured.
They tell of their experience and the hope they have of recovering the fertility of the soil; they are observant and know the circumstances of each ecosystem.
“One of the most interesting things that one of the farmers who appear in the report told me – Soto recalled – is that they not only produce food”, they work so that the ecosystem stays “alive and lasts”.
Traditional agriculture depends on external inputs so that the soil can produce such as artificial fertilizers and pesticides.
In the long term, “it is unsustainable because you depend more and more on those external inputs and your soil is eroding,” summarized the screenwriter.
King of Spain International Journalism Awards
The King of Spain International Journalism Awards, the most prestigious in the Ibero-American sphere, celebrate their 40th anniversary. They were created by the EFE Agency and the Spanish Agency for International Development Cooperation (Aecid).
In addition to the economic endowment of 10,000 euros (10,800 euros at current exchange rates) -an amount that places them at the Pulitzer level-, the winners will receive from the hands of the King of Spain Felipe VI a sculpture by the Spanish artist Joaquín Vaquero Turcios.