At 46 years old, the Cadiz designer Rafa Monge has created a whole universe around agriculture with its project Banished Cultivation . An initiative that shows that tilling with brackish water (not salty) is not only possible , but the results obtained with it are wonderful.
A daring crop that drinks from family tradition and from the fields of Sanlúcar de Barrameda, which aims to recover the value it had in past times and project towards a most promising future.
Behind the, Rafa Monge willing to confirm that we have vegetables from the Navazo for a while . From the exotic to the most traditional, a new range of gastronomic products that are born screaming at the top of their lungs: “here we are and from here we come”. Because nothing like listening to mother nature to achieve maximum results. Come and see.
WHEN DESIGN, ORIGINS AND SUSTAINABILITY GO HAND IN HAND
After Banished Cultivation is Rafa Monge, a restless, emotional, dreamy person whose professional career began far from the fields of Sanlúcar de Barrameda. Encouraged by parents who did not want his son to follow in the footsteps of the family trade focused on agriculture , in 1997 he moved to Barcelona and years later -specifically in 2001- to England. He ended up at Oxford combining work with a degree in Business Administration and Management + Technology Engineering.
On his return from England he got a job at a technology company where he worked until 2012. It was then that he decided to make a 180º turn in his life. and he started on a full year-long design course - with product design, graphic design, interior design and fashion design - which eventually turned into an official Product Design degree. After this period, back in Cádiz, a few years later, Cultivo Desterrado arrived.
“During all that time I had the whole issue of agriculture in my head. My family wanted to get rid of the field because none of us wanted to dedicate ourselves to the trade and I took it as a problem that was at home and that it was necessary to solve. They have been very abrupt and very difficult changes but they have always been works in which I have believed. I think this project closes the whole cycle, and brings together everything I have been working on since my childhood and shows that everything has been complementary. It all adds up”, Rafa Monge tells Traveler.es.
It was in 2017 when he began exploring at the cultivation level but also focusing on gastronomy. Paying attention to all the experiences he had abroad at the culinary level, he decided to bring them to Cádiz and start growing these products to be able to consume them at home or in nearby restaurants.
“I followed the same guidelines as in design, but instead of working with materials when designing, I worked with products that were vegetables. I proposed and nature responded with those vegetables. And with those conclusions, he reconsidered, rectified and planted again”, comments Rafa Monge.
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“You cannot fight against nature because it is she who cultivates , who answers. In 2018, with all the results obtained in the previous year, I began to fully focus on the project and began to work with some potential clients. And that is when Banished Cultivation was officially born,” she adds.
The name couldn't be more apt. comes from exile and translates into a play on words yes On the one hand, the banishment of the protagonist who returns to his home 20 years after leaving it, on the other hand, that crop which is the Navazo, which has been banished for many decades from its own land, and finally, because of the banishment suffered by its father when, through an institutional solution, some farmers managed to bring fresh water from the Guadalete River to their fields. It was not the case of his father.
"Plus, It is also called Exiled Crop because I grow many products that are quite banished from gastronomy . I am giving it a space in cultivation where it did not have it and a leading role that no one had given it, but instead of bringing it from abroad I cultivate it on my own land in Sanlúcar de Barrameda”, she indicates.
We are facing a project agricultural redesign , which aims to rescue the traditional navazo cultivation , dignify a trade and project it towards a different future full of innovation, design, sustainability and opportunities. It was born with the intention that both farmers and potential clients change the perspective that we currently have on the field, of everything that it offers us and how it offers it to us.
In short, and in the words of Rafa Monge: “ That the agriculture of the future is no longer just a product supplier, but also be a service provider . An emotional service, an experience that the farmer can offer to the end customer”, he says.
The Navazo: a traditional way of farming.
THE NAVAZO: A TRADITIONAL FORM OF CULTIVATION
As a clear differentiating element we find the traditional cultivation of the Navazo, protagonist -and almost exclusive- of the Sanlúcar de Barrameda area due to its proximity to the Atlantic Ocean and the mouth of the Guadalquivir River. This is a interdunal coastal agriculture system, that drinks both salt and fresh water, more difficult to plant, but not impossible.
What Rafa Monge has done is change the look. Where everyone around him saw a problem, he has seen an opportunity.
What is particular about this type of cultivation is the Brackish water . Everything that is grown in these fields of Sanlúcar de Barrameda has an incomparable flavor and texture, and more and more people are aware of this thanks to the fantastic outreach and production work that this plant product designer.
“I work as a team with nature, she is the one who leads the baton, the queen of the field and the one who rules in all cycles. I propose and she disposes of it. Always with the utmost respect . The stress with salt water is already felt by the plant, I am not going to cause a negative effect on the plant, or in the field, or in nature. I ask him through my actions when sowing, then I observe the process and the result; from the shape, through the times to the flavors on the plate”, adds the creator of Cultivo Desterrado.
Banished Cultivation.
AGRICULTURE OF EMOTIONAL EXPERIENCES IN HAUTE CUISINE
Among the 200 varieties of products that he has tested over the years, around a hundred have remained in the project. Options like colleague , the pea , the peanut , the sunflower artichoke , the shiso , the caraway, rhubarb , the chinese celery waves navazo potatoes , are just some denominations that we can find among the selection of proposals that Rafa Monge has made grow in the Navazo of Sanlúcar de Barrameda.
And from the countryside they have reached the tables of prestigious restaurants, first in the province of Cádiz, and later throughout Spain. Chefs of the stature of angel lion in aponiente , José Luis Fernández Tallafigo in the Mirror, Luis Callealta in Ciclo, Fernando Córdoba in El Faro de Puerto de Santa María, Saddle in Madrid or Orobianco in Calpe.
“Restaurants were my beginnings. We talk about enjoying with the six senses (when you have already enjoyed touch, hearing, smell, sight and -of course- taste, comes that emotional reaction of surprise that is quite an experience ; when a dish takes us to a trip, a person or even a childhood memory. I am not only a product provider but also a service provider”, indicates Rafa Monge.
Now luckily it is also individuals or occasional customers who can benefit from Cultivation Banished products with options such as surprise boxes or limited edition lots.
Give a second life to ugly vegetables.
THE UGLY VEGETABLES OF RAFA MONGE
Within this project, there are many by-products that we find that try to make the agricultural sector an increasingly better and more sustainable proposal. This is where the ugly food movement comes into play, which the creator of Exiled Cultivation has taken to his particular field.
We are talking about the so-called ugly vegetables , those that within the production chain do not comply with the shape, color and size that are supposed to enter through the eyes on the supermarket shelf or on the restaurant menu. “Anything that does not comply with that image with which that vegetable is identified, is discarded and the problem is that it cannot enter the food chain , is not recognized as food but as deformation”, comments Rafa Monge.
For this, it is of vital importance that society -starting with the rest of the farmers- grant it a place in our daily consumption. Avoid that waste of 1,200 tons a year of vegetables that are thrown into the field . You have to stop buying with your eyes, the taste only shows that this product is the same as any other.
“What I do is, instead of patronizing them, I turn the product into something extraordinary ; as a wonderful result that nature does. Convert that piece, give it a leading role so that they do not remain invisible on the field. The chefs are ultimately creating food artwork ”, he adds.
THE BANISHED CULTIVATION LEGACY
Banished Cultivation is the first step in leaving a mark on a legacy that still has a long way to go.
Among its objectives, it is Rafa Monge himself who answers us: “ In the short term we want to continue promoting vegetables, such as sunflower artichokes and peanuts. In the medium term, position, give value to the Navazo potato from Sanlúcar de Barrameda, and in the long term, ensure that this is considered and recognized as Cultural Heritage and, above all, obtain some help at an institutional or European level”, he says. .
“I would also like there to be an interpretation, training and research center in which all those people who are interested in the project have a place”, he sentences.
If we have no doubt about one thing, it is that there is Banished Cultivation for a while. Do we start by accepting that another type of agriculture is possible and that we must value everything that revolves around it? Better late than never.
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