After a curving road we reached this vast plain. Behind all the shades of green that the fall offers, as a curtain, you saw the white and white Pyrenees. So we discovered Abaurregaina, the highest town in Euskal Herria. Next to the road, we visited the Bilobila project on a renovated balcony, an initiative aimed at the growth of Angora goats and the production of mohair fiber. It seems that this material, useful both in winter and summer, has very different characteristics.

The word we used to describe the young creator of the hacienda was courage. In fact, in these times when concentration increases in urban centers, it is sometimes difficult for us to understand that by going the opposite way, lifestyle and trade are destined to rural areas. According to Eurostat, currently only 32% of the European population lives in rural areas and the rest in small towns and/or cities. In Euskal Herria there are also villages that are in the process of depopulation and many of those that have not been emptied have become zones with a city model.

If we look at the data, in general, although in the Basque Country agricultural and livestock holdings decreased in the period 2009-2020, animal heads gradually increased in both Gipuzkoa, Bizkaia and Álava (86.7% for pigs and 4.5% for cattle) and in Navarra (21% for cattle and 30% for rabbit). This shows, in a way, a tendency to focus production on large farms, that is, smaller but larger farms. It can be said that the productive model is changing, macroines are gradually being created. In many cases, with a higher degree of technology penetration, fewer work hands are needed, usually due to a higher level of production. This necessarily implies a change of philosophy.

It is difficult to compare the reality of Lapurdi, Nafarroa Beherea and Zuberoa with that of the territories of the South, as there are data available from different years. However, the Chamber of Agriculture is doing intensive work to preserve the sector and has launched the economic observatory of cultivation in the Northern Basque Country. A clear commitment to protecting popular cultivation. It is interesting to know that farms under 20 hectares have twice as many jobs per hectare as farms 20 to 50 hectares and three times as farms 50 to 100 hectares.

The productive model of farms consists of a wide variety of yarns, from animal care to working conditions of workers or product quality. Surely they will be interrelated issues and the gaps or strengths in one of them will necessarily affect the others. Projects such as the granddaughter are often bravely associated, and so I wonder if we have internalised all these issues in the sector. Because I think we've naturalized profit-based practices, forgetting the importance of key production processes in our lives. This neglect is reflected in the low presence of those who occur in rural areas in our urban centres. I fear that with these dynamics we are building the beams of the future production/consumption model.

However, what is coming can be clarified by seeing and learning endless initiatives parallel to the greatness of the small Abaurregaina bord, which are weaving the future with mime.