Frome Tropicales: once años de ensayo, esfuerzo y aprendizaje en cultivo ecológico

Frome Tropicales Farm: Eleven Years of Trial, Effort, and Learning in Organic Avocado and Mango Cultivation Güímar — A field day held at the Frome Tropicales farm brought together Coplaca technicians, farmers, and students to share the experience of a pioneering project on the island: seven hectares of avocado orchards planted according to organic criteria with an educational and experimental objective. The farm, leased by Coplaca in the mid-2010s, serves as a testing ground where technical discussions, management decisions, and lessons learned over more than a decade converge. Coplaca's technical manager, José Oramas, traced the project's origins: the search, around 2014, for a farm to experiment with avocado cultivation when the sector was experiencing a boom. Coplaca established a company called Frome — in which it shares ownership with Eurobanan Canarias — to integrate production and marketing and to have its own plots for training and trials. The farm, a plot of land abandoned for decades in an area affected by aggregate extraction and hot winds, was gradually converted from 2015 onwards with varying planting densities and differentiated management practices. The project was not without internal tensions. Oramas recounted the technical debate that arose between those who advocated for strict organic management and those who defended conventional methods to maximize production. The practical solution was a middle ground: plots managed according to organic criteria and others with integrated management, which allowed for a comparison of results. Manolo Puerta, the technician in charge of the farm, took over the direction of daily management and, according to Oramas, was instrumental in implementing practices such as the use of compost, green manures, successive plantings, and the promotion of biological beneficial insects. The fight against pests—including mealybugs and glass mite infestations—and climatic limitations were constant challenges. Oramas acknowledged that the farm has experienced both good and bad years; that production in the Canary Islands has shown a general decline despite the increase in cultivated area; And that factors such as winds, water quality, and the lack of registered plant protection products complicate avocado management on the island. Even so, he maintained that Frome has been a valuable laboratory: “In these ten years, the farm has served for final degree projects, high school and university internships, and for defining work strategies,” he stated. One of the recurring lessons of the project has been the importance of “learning to see,” in Oramas’s words, referring to the contribution of biodiversity specialist Jesús Quintano—a guest at the event—and the need to observe ecosystems, beneficial organisms, and natural succession rather than applying rigid formulas. The farm has attempted to restore the fertility of degraded soils through organic matter, species selection, and the promotion of biodiversity. Oramas emphasized that the farm workers have gradually gained autonomy in deciding which species to conserve and which to eliminate, “because natural selection provides us with biomass and ecosystem services.” Frome Tropicales has also served to bring agriculture closer to conservation: the growing presence of birds, beneficial insects, bats, and other beneficial organisms confirms that biodiversity-oriented management can reconcile production and ecological functions. Oramas argued that farmers must once again see themselves as stewards of the environment, overcoming the old dichotomy between productivity and conservation. Technicians and attendees appreciated the project's openness to visits and exchange: the farm is available to professionals and students to showcase both successes and failures. "We don't hold back: here, mistakes are seen and learned from," Oramas concluded, emphasizing that the accumulated experience—trials on planting patterns, densities, irrigation, and pest management—provides valuable lessons for Canary Island agriculture in a context of climate uncertainty and new regulations on reducing pesticide use. The day at Frome Tropicales thus yielded a double result: on the one hand, the realization of the structural difficulties of avocado cultivation in the region (wind, water, pests and lower yields), and on the other hand, the possibility of building more sustainable and educational management models from experimental farms managed by cooperatives and technicians.