The Cabildo of Lanzarote is carrying out an environmental recovery plan within the framework of the Salvar La Geria program, which consists of carrying out the recovery of farms that have been abandoned for a long time and that contain a high landscape value within the Protected Natural Space.
The president of the Cabildo of Lanzarote, Oswaldo Betancort, and the councilor of Landscape and Food Sovereignty, Samuel Martín, visited several of the farms in La Geria that are the object of this restoration service contract last Friday, framed within the employment program of the Canary Islands Development Fund (FDCAN), managed by the Planning and Project Coordination Unit of the Cabildo, directed by Jacobo Medina, and which has an investment of almost 3.5 million euros.
“Indeed, Lanzarote is not only being organized and legally protected, as we have demonstrated in these months of work to promote the Island Plan or the Special Plan of La Geria, but we are also reactivating an environmental project led by Samuel Martín, in which we give the owners of La Geria the possibility of entering their farms to clean and maintain the cultivated space and that it is perfectly integrated with the landscape and its ecosystem,” said Oswaldo Betancort during the visit.
“I would also like to highlight the social component of the initiative, since the groups of workers belong to vulnerable groups on the island, to whom the program gives the opportunity to opt for a decent job that gives them motivation and personal balance, giving the project a significant environmental and social value,” added the president.
For his part, the head of the Area, Samuel Martín, considered that “the Cabildo has a very interesting project for such a sensitive space, thanks to which around 50 farms have already been cleaned in recent months and we are going to continue working along these lines with the different owners who want us to recover those farms, because in the end La Geria is landscape, La Geria is Lanzarote and we have to value our territory, our landscape and, above all, the protection of our spaces.”
“The program works as a way to help those owners who do not have the means to carry out the restoration of the farms, but as long as it goes hand in hand with a commitment from the owner to attend to and cultivate said land for a minimum of 3 years,” explained the councilor.
“In those cases in which the owners do not have the means to attend to the farms, the Landscape and Food Sovereignty Area has a program called Land Bank, where they can transfer the land to people interested in agricultural activity, thus stopping the loss of useful agricultural land on the island,” clarifies Martín.
Precisely, the president of the Cabildo and the councilor learned first-hand about the work carried out on a 55,000 square meter farm that belongs to one of the winegrowers who has had the help of this program, Luis Fuentes. “My wife and I have worked on this farm, but I recently had a small work accident and if it weren't for those people who have come, it would have been very difficult to maintain such a large farm as this one,” commented the winegrower, who was grateful for the help it provides to people in his situation.
Almost 3.5 million for agricultural spaces
In the contracting of the service, which consists of two lots for an amount of 3,489,652 euros, the conservation of degraded agricultural spaces in the environment of the Protected Natural Space of La Geria, the agricultural area of the Natural Environment of La Corona, and improvement of the regions of Guatiza and Mala, as well as the conservation and improvement of the different agrosystems of the island (jable and sandy areas) and control and elimination of invasive flora.
In addition to supporting the employability and labor insertion of those most vulnerable profiles, the strategic line of the job-generating project is the cleaning, restoration and insular beautification, whose execution and realization of actions are planned for all of 2024 and 2025, the term being subject to possible extensions.
