At es Tonedor, in Es Mercadal, cheese is made the slow way. Unrefined sea salt goes straight onto the rind by hand, rather than the wheel going into a brine bath. The cheeses then mature for around two months at 11–13 °C in controlled humidity, turned every two days, their rinds rubbed as they age.
Carlos, the farmer behind es Tonedor, came to the craft through a life with animals. He worked as a shepherd and a sheep shearer before taking on his own herd of goats, learning the trade of the payès detail by detail, and began making cheese to do justice to the quality of the milk his animals produce.
Everything in that process begins underground. The grass the goats graze, the mineral character of the milk, the flavor that survives two months of maturing – all of it tracks the condition of the soil. It is why a goat farm is a good place to understand what partners from across the Mediterranean came to Menorca to discuss.
An Island Laboratory
Menorca was the final stop on a tour that has taken GOV4ALL partners to soil health living labs in southern Spain, France, Lesvos and mainland Greece. The project works with farmers, cooperatives, public authorities and NGOs on governance and business models for rural regeneration.
Those living labs are now accelerating towards Rural Regeneration Hubs: entities that provide services to local communities and form a network for sharing business strategies, governance models and practical recommendations. In Menorca, the Regenerative Agroinnovation Center has recently begun operating as that hub.
GOB Menorca team explained the farm’s water system – a decisive issue on an island shaped by drought. During the visit, two rehabilitated red kites were released back into the wild by the Centre de Recuperació de Fauna Silvestre, under the responsibility of the Conselleria d’Agricultura, Pesca i Medi Natural of the Government of the Balearic Islands. The release was carried out through a collaboration between GOB Menorca and COFIB, the Balearic wildlife recovery consortium. At Cooperativa de Consum San Crispín, the team showed how a consumer cooperative connects island producers with the people who live and eat on the island.
The visit also highlighted the role of the Aliança per una Menorca Agroecològica, the local expression of GOV4ALL’s Living Lab. An open, evolving initiative centered on collaboration, the Alliance is bringing together organizations and people who had not necessarily worked together before, around a shared purpose: advancing the agroecological transition in Menorca. It offers a local space where relationships, knowledge and practical action can come together to support change across the island’s food and farming systems.
Farming Without a Plough
Rayén Soluciones Agronómicas led a workshop on agroecological farming and practical and regenerative ways to read and improve soil while working with natural processes. It took place at Productes Ecològics Santo Domingo, in Punta Prima, where Sergio Riudavets farms land his grandparents worked and which he recovered with his parents, Toni and Mari, in 2014.
Santo Domingo covers 18,000 square meters, 11,000 of them cultivated, and is worked without ploughing. No heavy machinery, no turning of the soil, compost produced on site, the beds tended by hand so that microbial life stays intact. The farm grows between fifty and sixty vegetables across a year, and chose this season's twenty-odd tomato varieties together with island chefs. Four or five farms on Menorca currently work this way.
In March, Sergio was named one of Europe's Top 50 Farmers for 2026, a pan-European cohort of fifty regenerative farmers selected across some twenty countries. The farm supplies school canteens through a farm-to-fork program that puts its vegetables on the plates of some 400 children on the island each week.
Between the herd at es Tonedor, the unploughed beds at Santo Domingo, the stewardship agreements GOB Menorca signs with farmers through its Custòdia Agrària program, and the cooperative that brings the produce to island shoppers, Menorca is assembling something the rest of the Mediterranean is watching closely.
“Custòdia Agrària works because of the trust we build together: a mutual commitment to protect the territory and to farm it sustainably, ”Jara Febrer, GOB Menorca