By Katalin Tornai

Casa Bartuelo has survived for at least six generations in the beautiful landscape shaped by mountains and pastures in Asturias, on the shores of the Cantabrian Sea, Northern Spain. It’s a traditional Asturian farmstead, which means it’s a family that has always been dedicated to both crop and livestock farming. Even when hard times hit, with three sisters losing their parents very young, the eldest took charge to keep the farm alive.

“They were very brave, full of courage and very hardworking,” says María Gutiérrez, a vet and livestock farmer, who joined the family and the farm 10 years ago, when she met her husband, Ramón, one of the sons of the courageous eldest sister.

Their story is an inspiring example of how rural life is sustained through generational resilience. But maintaining this way of life has become increasingly difficult.

Guardians of rural communities

Family farmers face two major challenges: achieving profitability and achieving a healthy work/life balance, where “they have enough time to be with their families and go on holiday like everyone else,” explains Rubén López Polvorinos, who works in a cooperative, helping them as an intermediary between farmers and technological companies and solutions.

The importance of these small- and medium-sized family farms is far greater than most people realise; they are part of a living system where each piece depends on the other. “They produce good food for the people,” adds López Polvorinos.

But their contribution to society doesn’t stop there: “In the case of these small and medium-sized farms, what is interesting is not how much they produce… but rather that they are very, very important parts of rural society, of the social fabric,” explains sociologist Bernadett Csurgó, the Head of research centre for social ecology and climate change at ELTE Centre for Social Sciences, in Budapest, Hungary.

These family farms are also caretakers of the land, traditions and ways of life that cannot be replaced if they disappear. Family farms are seen as “guardians” because they are the ones who sustain the land and take care of the environment. “These farms are the backbone of rural communities,” explains Emilio Tereñes, leader of the blockchain research team at Technological Center for Information and Communication Foundation (CTIC).

Yet despite their local centrality, their institutional and political weight remains limited.

“At the same time, at the level of decision-making, or in domestic agricultural policy, they come across as almost invisible,” says Csurgó. “While these farms play a very important role locally, they barely appear at the level of decision-making. This represents a serious structural problem.” There is also the issue of accessing resources. Administrative burdens are often identical for small family farms and large enterprises with a huge project apparatus. “As a result, many small farms do not even apply for EU subsidies,” states Csurgó.

The struggle for new technologies

Another layer of pressure is the digital transition. Many digital tools are designed with large industrial clients in mind. “When new technologies are developed, the first deployments in the field are a very dangerous zone,” says Tereñes. And for technology providers, it is safer and more profitable to turn to a big farmer for testing. “Selling your technology to 10 big clients is better than selling it to 100 small customers,” says Tereñes.

This is exactly where the European project GUARDIANS steps in. Its goal is to reduce the digital divide between industrial and family farms by making tools accessible.

A key player in this process is the cooperative structure in Asturias, which acts as a bridge for small farmers. As Emilio explains, “farmers have trust in cooperative”, and it can help find farms where the technology can be implemented.

Family farms are not necessarily resistant to innovation. Flexibility and adaptability are very important features of these farms, says Csurgó, explaining that being small makes them more agile and that farming takes place within a family setting.

A QR code to learn more about what you eat

Through GUARDIANS, farms like Casa Bartuelo can now show consumers how they work: what they grow, how they care for their animals and where each product comes from. The blockchain traceability technology helps them tell their story transparently and in their own voice. “Once you put something on blockchain, it cannot be tampered with or falsified,” explains Tereñes.

At Casa Bartuelo, blockchain allows a buyer scanning a QR code to learn everything from the birth of the animal. “It shows all the work and cost behind reaching that final product,” explains María. It’s important because, unlike large-scale industrial farming, Casa Bartuelo’s work is very natural and artisanal. María thinks that some part of their work, like producing the Asturian faba beans, cannot be done or replaced by anything industrial.

As she tells us, one of the hardest parts of maintaining such a traditional and local approach is helping people understand the true value of what they produce. “Above all, giving the product the value it truly has — making people aware of that value. That’s the challenge,” she says.

This transparency also helps them to build trust, which becomes an added value. “Small farms are never going to compete on price with big farms… So they should work on being more sustainable and give more quality to the consumer,” says Tereñes.

Inherited sustainability

The pressures become even greater in a globalised, low-cost, competitive market. Their products are natural, healthy and free from additives, but this comes with a price. For small and medium farms, sustainability is more than just certification or technological compliance. “In the group of successors (those farms where the younger generation carries on), although sustainability is an important consideration, it is very often strongly connected to the importance of preserving local traditions and cultural heritage,” explains Csurgó. For example, they are reducing the use of pesticides, experimenting with different mulching methods, and using the same plant combinations as their ancestors.

Behind the economic challenges lies an even larger risk for the region’s cultural and ecological identity. If farms like Casa Bartuelo disappear, so too does the diversity that makes these territories unique. As María warns, “If family farms like ours don’t continue, in the end, all that will disappear. There will be no differentiated products, and we’ll lose identity. In cities, everything will be the same—same shops, same products—nothing that makes one place different from another.”








Contacts:

Fidel Díez - R&D Director - CTIC: fidel.diez@fundacionctic.org
Inés Dintén García - Project Manager - CTIC: ines.dinten@fundacionctic.org

Communication:
Erika Novellini, Communication & Dissemination Senior Officer, ICONS: erika.novellini@icons.it
Alice De Ferrari, Project Management Officer, ICONS: alice.deferrari@icons.it

Project website: https://guardians-project.eu/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/guardians-project/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/people/Guardians-EU-project/61566816897243/