One of our biggest concerns today is climate change, and how it will affect our crops and our lives. We can have two very different attitudes to face this major issue. We can be passive, waiting for climate change to affect us fully and adapt to its consequences, if we can, or we can be proactive and try to do everything we can to minimise the negative effects that this change will have.

We already have examples of this change in the exceptional nature of the meteorological accidents that affect us, the warmer temperatures year after year… It will be more evident when we can put a certain distance and look at it with some perspective, quantify it, etc. But in the meantime, we find ourselves in different situations that must be solved day by day, and that we cannot postpone.

This is the case with new plantations, when there is a need to propose a new vineyard or redirect one and replant it again. This is when the Keyline method can play a very important role in decision-making: how we will plant it, what form it will take…

“Learning to intelligently design and manage the agricultural landscape, in order to make the most of water resources, and return its depth and fertility to the soil, is exactly the goal of Keyline cultivation,” explains Jesús Ruiz on the www.liniaclave.org website. He is a Keyline expert since 2007, and the most experienced and veteran person in this system and its application in our country.

The Keyline design combines water collection and conservation with earth regeneration techniques. In other words, it uses the water that we naturally have, it distributes it regularly throughout the vineyard and, in addition to this, it uses soil regeneration techniques that guarantee the survival of new plants while preventing the erosion of the new cultivated space. Besides, the design of the new space usually includes the integration of trees because of their contribution to increasing biodiversity, and the role they will play in capturing CO2.

With this design, we learn to look at agriculture in a different way. We will continue to have the same water, but we will make it stay there instead of it going away by evaporation, or just downhill. We will also have more plants and more roots. And if we manage it well, we will create soil, enrich the landscape, stabilise the climate and increase the profitability of authentic agriculture.

“To develop fertile and biologically active soil, capable of retaining water wherever it falls, and also capturing huge amounts of atmospheric CO2” This is the objective of the Keyline system, and a possible solution to the environmental problems that we are currently dealing with.

Jesús Ruiz is clear about this, and he explains it in his training and advice. His knowledge base as a topographer has given him the ability to read the land. His master’s degree in organic farming, a holistic vision. His training in permaculture, the ability to design and seek the regeneration of soils through crops. His help at Mas Martinet has allowed us to design new plantations that meet the new challenges of the new climate horizon which is approaching.

Thank you for teaching us to see everything clearer.