The Engineer Who Came Home

Manuel Troya never meant to be a farmer. He grew up in the historic coastal city of Cádiz in Spain and moved abroad to build a career as a process engineer in Hamburg, Germany. In 2015, Manuel’s life took a 180-degree turn when his father passed away, leaving his family with difficult choices to make about the future of their 475-hectare property. “We have never been very attached to the field. We are a small family consisting of my brother, my mother and my father. When my father died in 2015, we decided to take over the farm,” he explains.

Despite having little to no knowledge about agriculture, Manuel decided to leave his career and move back to Finca Pajaretillo to take care of the family land, which had been farmed for nearly 60 years. “I knew very little about the agricultural or livestock sectors,” he recalls. “When I began working on the farm, something I had previously idealized, I realized after three years that it was a system requiring a significant input of energy, time, effort, dedication, and mental energy with little economic return and no ecological benefit. That felt wrong and led me to explore other paths eventually discovering regenerative farming.”

The Homeland

Finca Pajaretillo is located in the foothills of Sierra de Cádiz, a semi-arid land with an unforgiving canvas: thin soils, long dry summers, a landscape already worn by decades of overuse, and a scarce water supply with only one well and one tank. For three years, Manuel followed the conventional farming methods and practices that had been used for decades, carefully tracking the results. He realized the costs, the effort, and the results were not benefiting the operation, and the land was degrading.

In 2018, while attending a Holistic Management conference, Manuel confirmed the observations he had made: the conventional system was not just economically fragile, it was actively degrading the land.

“The course showed me how our practices were hurting this place I deeply cared about and impoverishing the ecosystem,” he says. “My lightbulb moment came after meeting Gustavo Alés, a holistic management expert with over 30 years of experience. He opened our eyes and showed us how things can be done another way.”

Thus began a new chapter on the farm. They introduced a holistic management system that was a low-investment approach, capable of shifting the production model from degradation to regeneration. “That moment changed my life,” Manuel recalls.

The Transformation: From Degradation to a Thriving Landscape

Manuel has now transitioned all 475 hectares to holistic planned grazing. Two hundred beef cattle are managed in planned rotations to restore pastures and stimulate soil biology. Alongside this, he established high-density syntropic agroforestry integrated with livestock grazing.

He also invested in water retention landscapes to address the farm’s most persistent constraint. “Water scarcity has long been our weakest point,” he says. “We addressed this by increasing water reserves and interconnecting pumps and tanks, greatly improving resilience during long Mediterranean summers.” By increasing the water supply from a single source to three water sources and ten interconnected tanks, Manuel is now able to move water to every part of the property.

All of these changes took time and a mindset shift. Finding a team that understood the vision and could help to execute it was not a straightforward process. “Regeneration is a paradigm shift in how to approach running a farm. For years we worked with a team that was not fully convinced of the regenerative approach. With time and persistence, the right people joined, allowing us to progress much faster,” he says. Today, they have a team fully aligned with the vision and capable of managing the farm’s growing complexity.

Since 2018, Manuel has transformed the land, carefully adhering to the new techniques and improving not only the health of the land but also its profitability. The results are measurable: increased soil organic matter, reduced erosion, higher plant and animal biodiversity, and better livestock health. The financial picture shifted too, in a way that surprised him. “While we lowered our income level we also reduced production costs to the bare minimum, which increased the farm’s overall profitability,” he says. “In general terms, we enjoy greater financial peace of mind, and it allows us to invest instead of merely spending, while avoiding long-term debt or mortgages.”

Manuel’s next challenge is to find suppliers that align with Finca Pajaretillo’s vision and expand direct-to-consumer sales. “Achieving sufficient economies of scale for direct sales remains challenging as it is difficult to find suppliers who understand and align with our regenerative production model,” he says.

Building a Community

Manuel wants the transformation journey of Finca Pajaretillo to be visible and accessible to the community. He cares about sharing his knowledge, the failures and successes for the benefit of the community as a whole. Monthly open days bring families, university students, agronomists, and fellow farmers to walk the land and see what holistic grazing looks like in practice in a semi-arid Mediterranean climate. A documentary, Ganado o Desierto (Livestock or Desert), chronicles the journey for a wider audience. He is not gatekeeping the information, but sharing it openly so others can learn and replicate the approach.

His vision for the next ten to twenty years is continued, calculated expansion. He wants to add complexity: more species, more products, water retention landscapes fully built out, high-density forests mature enough to graze beneath. “The ultimate objective of the project is to achieve the highest possible environmental and economic profitability for the farm without sacrificing either of them,” he says, “while maximising multifunctionality and ensuring full transparency of results.” Being part of a community like Top 50 Farmers aligns directly with this vision. As Manuel says, “I want to continue setting up a farmer network where knowledge sharing in the different contexts is horizontal.”

Manuel imagines Finca Pajaretillo as a fully open farm where a community will gather, share stories, knowledge, and help to create a better future. A place where visitors can witness the entire process, from soil to product, and leave with something they can carry home.

As Manuel says, “I envision our farm as an open space where we can welcome people, share outcomes at all levels, discuss the challenges we have faced, and help shift perceptions and awareness, just as ours have evolved over time.” In growing the community’s vision and carrying the family’s legacy forward, Manuel Troya has found that the two were never separate to begin with.

Written by Top 50 Farmers and Juliana Bonnattos