They are already clear or thinking about whether they want to dedicate themselves to being shepherds, a profession on the verge of disappearing as a result of the lack of generational change and the structural difficulties suffered by the primary sector.
Twenty people from all over Catalonia and with very different profiles attended the first grazing “test” organized by Concactiva to learn more about the trade: from those who have a project in mind to others who have had a first contact with the sector.
The response has surprised the technicians of the organizing entity and the Museu Terra, which is also promoting the project.
“At the beginning we were going blind and we thought it would not generate interest,” said the coordinator of Joves Actius, Carles Heredia, celebrating the success of the proposal.
Pere Caselles is one of the young people who has participated in the shepherding course. He is a mechanic by profession and forest management has always caught his attention. For this reason, a couple of years ago he decided to leave his job and move from Montblanc to Caldes de Montbui (Vallès Oriental), on the farm of some family friends, to help them with the livestock and cleaning the space.
Unlike other colleagues, Caselles is clear about his project: he wants to have a herd of cows destined for cleaning the forests and not for production.
For a year, Caselles has been working to promote the initiative. “I presented the proposal to the Department of Climate Action, but since it is not a meat or milk project, they do not consider it to be a model to follow,” Caselles lamented, ensuring that they have not helped him “at all.”
“They tell you that if you are not a meat producer, that if you do not put thirty cows and take the risk, you cannot make the young incorporation,” he explained.
Caselles has decided to “start little by little with four cows and a bull, which they raise” until he can dedicate himself “fully” in the future. For now he will have to combine it with other jobs.
“From today to tomorrow you cannot dedicate yourself to livestock farming,” lamented Caselles, in reference to all those people interested in the sector, but who do not come from a peasant family.
In this situation, he assures that although “starting from scratch is difficult,” he maintains his enthusiasm and affirms that he will soon begin his forest management project. In fact, he has already spoken with residents of Prenafeta, Blancafort and Montblanquet to clean their properties altruistically.
Caselles’ proposal is one of the most innovative that has been proposed during this six-session course promoted by Concactiva and is part of the Landscape School project – promoted by the Museu Terra – to recover old trades, avoid the depopulation of areas rural areas, as well as fighting forest fires.
In this sense, two of the course trainers, Mireia Masalias and Armand Flaujat, stressed that the poor state of the forests makes prior and deep cleaning necessary before grazing can help prevent the fires.
“Right now, as the forests are, we are not going to solve anything with a herd,” lamented Masalias, who believes that the administration should provide “bureaucratic facilities, so that forest owners do not see an impediment when searching for a technical one to carry out cleaning and good management of the forest.”
“Once the forest is fixed, then we bring in a herd to maintain it and not have to invest money in cleaning again,” he added.
In this sense, he recalled that the majority of the properties are privately owned and, therefore, asked the Generalitat to act as a link. “There are private forests that we do not know who owns them,” said Masalias, who believes that “the administration should be the one to look for the owners to put them in contact with shepherds in the area.”
