Sunseed Desert Technology

The land where our primary food gardens are located has recently been put up for sale by the landowners. We have been renting it since the 90s but unfortunately cannot afford to buy this land with the savings that the project has. Just like countless other organisations, our financial situation has been strained for the last two years due to the fact that we have not been able to run as many courses as normal or have our flagship annual event Festival Del Agua on site (we had to cancel it in 2020 and could only offer an online version in 2021).

All of the money that we raise in this crowdfunding campaign will go towards buying the land known to Sunseed as Diego I, II and III gardens. The full price of the land is €18,000 but a deposit payment of €6,000 will allow us to truly secure the land as our own and enter into a proper payment plan with the owners.

History of the land and our connection with the landowners
We have a special connection with the family who own the Diego gardens - they are three daughters who inherited this land from their father Diego when he died recently. Diego was born and raised in Los Molinos del Río Aguas (the village where Sunseed is located), but he decided to move to Lucainena when his family bought an electricity-powered mill there - which was a revolution and a big improvement to their lives at the time, compared to using watermills to produce grain and oil.

When Diego's father (Francisco, the mayor of Los Molinos) died and the family's land in Los Molinos passed to Diego, he used it to grow potatoes and beans and went there frequently, despite the distance from his home in Lucainena. As he became older and couldn't take care of the gardens anymore, the first Sunseeders who had moved into the village began growing food there with his blessing, since he had the strong wish that the land would continue to be cultivated and not abandoned. Although Diego was never a part of the Sunseed community, he used to come and explain things to the Sunseeders, for example showing them how the irrigation line (acequia) worked. His daughter Isabelle has told us about his lifelong emotional connection to the land and the village, and the fact that after he couldn't drive any more, he often asked his children to go and visit Los Molinos with him, so that he could spend time there and they could get to know the place where he had been born.

Diego's daughters still feel a sentimental connection to their land in Los Molinos but have finally decided to sell it for personal reasons.

Buying this land is essential to continuing the Sunseed project as we know it, for several reasons:

1. Nutrient-rich soil
   Diego I and II are the parts of our gardens that are closest to our Main House kitchen and therefore comprise our primary intensive food-growing area (permaculture zone 1). Generations of Sunseeders have worked on this land following permaculture principles, leading to nutrient-rich soil, and it is the best-quality soil we have for growing food - a rarity and a valuable resource in this dry, sandy desert climate. As any gardener knows, garden beds with healthy, moisture-retaining soil take years to create.

2. Our gardens as a key educational resource
   Our Diego gardens are a key educational resource for our volunteers, interns, visitors and community members in general. Keeping this land will allow us to continue promoting permaculture courses, internships, tours and volunteer opportunities, so that we can spread our knowledge about creating a food-growing oasis in a semi-arid landscape to as many people as possible!

3. Our dry toilets are located there and it provides us with access to the drylands we work in
   Without the use of Diego I and II, we could not access our compost toilet, the drylands plant nursery or our greenhouses. It would completely break up the structure of the current Sunseed gardens and we would have to redesign various parts of our land infrastructure, starting again from scratch. This would require a huge investment of time and resources which could be far better spent in other ways.

4. We experiment with syntropic agroforestry systems
   In recent months, our garden team has worked hard to convert Diego III from a simple fruit tree orchard into a productive and biodiverse syntropic agroforestry system. To lose that piece of land now would be really sad, not only for us but also for the biodiversity of the environment.

5. On our path to self-sufficiency
   We have recently set ourselves the goal of becoming 50% self-sufficient in terms of the amount of food we grow by the end of this year. If we lose the Diego gardens, there is no way we could achieve that goal.

6. Sunseed's historic connection with the land
   Both the landowners and we ourselves (as the current stewards of the Sunseed legacy) feel that the Sunseed project should be the rightful owner of this land, as it seems the best way to ensure that the land continues to be used as Diego himself would have wanted. We as a project have a sentimental, historic connection both with this land and with Diego's family, just as they do with us.

7. Bigger picture: a piece in the puzzle towards a socio-ecological transformation
   The gardens help the Sunseed project to act as a piece in the puzzle towards a socio-ecological transformation in the following ways:

   • we promote the commons through working for our subsistence together
   • we cultivate our land using a permaculture-based approach and thereby provide an active role model in midst of the Garden of Europe (or the Plastic Sea of Almerían greenhouses)
   • we are an environmental justice organisation raising awareness about socio-ecologically responsible lifestyles, which we ourselves cannot do properly without keeping the gardens.

At the moment, our community at Sunseed consists of ten voluntary long-term staff members, two interns and a volunteer. Although we normally have up to thirty people living and working here, this is a unique time for the project as we are currently going through a 'transition period' (which started in January and will last until summer 2022). Our transition work involves building renovations, changing the legal structure of Sunseed from a UK registered charity to a Spanish association, and hiring long-term managers to ensure consistency of the project for the future.

As staff members, we have different focus areas and skillsets, so during this time of transition we have arranged ourselves into five teams:

• Our community care team creates and maintains a culture of care within our community, ensuring group cohesion and organising our daily rituals and structures.
• The technical team is focused mostly on the deep renovation of all our buildings and infrastructure.
• The land care team encompasses both our food gardeners and our drylands specialists.
• Our office team work on internal and external communications, administration, accounting, budgeting, educational activities and funding applications.
• Our future care team is in charge of strategy and planning: they ensure that we are on track to achieve our overarching goals for this transition period, are planning ahead for the future of Sunseed, and will recruit long-term staff members who will take over from the 'transition team' in summer 2022.

Despite being divided into these teams, we structure our working lives according to a holistic philosophy so that we can help out in other teams when needed and desired, meaning that we can balance our working tasks in a way that feels good for each of us and for the whole community.