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INPRIMATU
Agriculture without plowing
Felix Noblia, young farmer awarded with the Agroecology Prize at the Paris Fair
  • The young farmer Félix Noblia has won the Grand Prize for Agroecology at the famous Paris Crop Fair, awarded by the French Government. Taking the farm of his uncle who was going to retire, he brings it from intensive industrial cultivation to agroecology and becomes a reference of the transition in the North of Noblia.
Pello Zubiria Kamino @pellozubiria 2017ko martxoaren 24a
Felix Noblia alaba txikiarekin Burgue-Erreitiko bere etxaldean. (Argazkia: Alim'Agri)

In 2008, just twenty-three years old and with a degree in biology in his pocket, Felix, whose head was more in music than in agriculture, let himself be created to take over the farm of his uncle Michel Lataillade, who went to Bidarte and Burgue-Erreiti on the coast of Lower Navarre.

But in addition to being involved in agriculture, he immediately maintained the transition to agroecology, entering the biological and also embarking on a system without plowing land. Leave aside the maize that reigns in those places of Amikuze “because it consumes too much water and medicine”, plant several species of plants, make rotations with them, bring the cows back to graze them almost all year round, move on to the breeds of cows more suitable for those fields...

A few years after starting his new job, the French government says in its report to honor the winner, he stopped plowing the land. The cultivation without ploughing, which was initially widespread in permaculture and orthopaedics, is also becoming more and more intensified in large areas.

By 2016, Noblia had the entire farm involved in organic farming and had embarked on research to prove that it was possible to earn a living in organic farming. Since then, the young Felix Noblia has become a reference for many farmers in the area in collaboration with the Basque Country Chamber of Agriculture.

Noblia has an interesting interview with Nuevo by Nora Arbelbide. The short video made by the French Government to Felix Noblia among the Parisian laureates is also revealing.