Daisy Wood: Seeing how others farm is a great investment
© Supplied by Daisy Wood I visited Madeira recently to escape the perpetual rain.
I spent time walking their unique network of irrigation channels, known as levadas, that weave through the mountains.
Next to the levada systems were “poios” – flat, step-like agricultural terraces carved into the island’s steep hillsides.
They transform what looks like an impossibly harsh landscape into productive ground.
See also: Daisy Wood – the public rarely appreciate the ‘story of care’
Some of the crops were familiar; others I struggled to identify.
Similarly, there were techniques I recognised from the UK; polycropping was extremely common in most plots, with bananas being the exception, always grown alone.
There were also crop combinations that were new to me – vineyards with potatoes and beans thriving beneath them.
Farming in Madeira © Supplied by Daisy Wood
It challenged my assumptions about what productive farming should look like.
My holiday walks became masterclasses in working with the landscape rather than against it.
It reminded me how easy it is to get too focused on our own parcel of land and rarely leave it.
But also just how important it is to step off the farm every now and then, find space away from working life, and experience a different culture.
This feels like a bold statement to make in a farming magazine, because we all know how hard it is to get away.
Livestock still need feeding, crops don’t pause for a holiday, and margins are often too tight to justify time off.
Farmers are some of the hardest-working people I know. But that is exactly why travelling matters.
We need to see farming done differently, try new ideas, and farm in the best way possible.
Even if travelling abroad isn’t feasible, go up or down the country.
Visit a different region. Walk someone else’s fields.
I’d encourage you to find a week in the year, if you can line up help at home, to experience farming elsewhere.
You might come back with new ideas, renewed energy, and a broader mindset.
Sometimes the best investment in your own farm is seeing how others run theirs.
