Tenerife's Finca Encuentro: Award-Winning Eco-Farm Pioneers Sustainable Future

What started as a family hobby has grown into a leading example of practical sustainability in Tenerife. Finca Encuentro, a 6,000-square-meter green space in Las Dehesas, Puerto de la Cruz, brings together ecology, education, and business success.

Five years ago, David Keswani González and his sons, Patrick and Frank Keswani Labunski, bought the property. Their first idea was to have a farm, live there, and grow their own fruits and vegetables. It was a casual plan for personal use, but they soon saw that the land needed a lot of time and effort, prompting them to think bigger.

Patrick, who was living in Germany, quit his job three years ago and moved to Tenerife. He wanted to work with his father on a deeper project focused on ecology and environmental care, a passion they both shared. This is how Finca Encuentro, a place where the future is carefully grown, came to be. This newspaper visited the farm with its two founders.

Patrick explains, "Our project aims to teach about sustainability. While growing organic fruits and vegetables is a key part – because it starts with what we eat – it's much more than that. It's about working with nature, building a good relationship between people, businesses, and our planet. We also educate teachers so they can share this way of thinking with their students. Many people talk about sustainability today, but they don't always understand what it truly means, especially when it's easy to put personal comfort first."

Finca Encuentro shows that this approach is possible without giving up the conveniences of modern life. It also helps connect the ideas of sustainability with practical actions.

The whole farm acts as a living classroom, following the 12 principles of permaculture. These include ideas like observing and interacting, storing energy, getting a yield, avoiding waste, and valuing diversity. This innovative approach earned the project the 2024 National 'Emprende Rural' Award in the Innovation category.

The greenhouse design perfectly reflects their philosophy of making the most of resources. It's built from old formwork boards from sawmills and covered by a passion fruit vine. This vine not only produces fruit they sell but also provides shade and makes the place look beautiful.

They also used glass scraps from factories around the island, and the floor is made of recycled rubber. This space is used for talks and courses, and they rent it out to other educators. In the coming year, they plan to offer more workshops, including making organic soaps, and continuing popular ones on nutrition, skin care, mindfulness, and meditation.

The farm runs entirely on solar energy and has a water recycling system. This water is used to irrigate decorative plants and 'support' plants like eucalyptus or pigeon pea, a plant from India that creates a lot of organic matter.

One of the farm's most innovative features is its 'syntropic forest.' This is an agricultural method inspired by jungle ecosystems, designed to create sustainable farms that are rich in produce and diverse in plant life.

So, where there was once just one type of banana plant, a diverse forest system now thrives, speeding up nature's growth process. Patrick explains, "We've planted many fruit trees, but also 'support' trees. These trees create organic matter, add nitrogen to the soil, draw water from deep down, and most importantly, their pruned branches are used to make the soil more fertile and productive, without needing chemical fertilizers or pesticides."

For vegetables, they do need to add more nutrients to the soil. They do this using their own compost, made from vegetable waste, eggshells, coffee grounds, and other materials.

In this diverse ecosystem, fruit trees grow alongside the support trees. You can find unusual exotic fruits like jabuticaba (from South America), carambola, lucuma (a prized Peruvian fruit known as 'the gourmet sweetener' by chefs), lilipili (like a cherry), and longan, also called 'dragon's eye' because it looks like an eyeball. The local climate has been crucial for the longan to thrive.

Nearby, you'll find cabbages that look almost perfect, 'wild' Canarian tobacco, chard with huge leaves, and a multicolored 'rainbow' chili plant where large spiders often rest. There's also a red banana plant (only the skin is red, the inside is white) which tastes different from traditional bananas, being firmer and more fibrous.

David and Patrick aim to show that ecological farming can be profitable. A key income source is selling mixed boxes of seasonal produce, available in different sizes, enough for a week's consumption. Customers can pick them up at the farm, or on Thursdays, they are delivered to local restaurants and to subscribers who receive four boxes a month.

The boxes are plastic, but this is intentional: customers are asked to return them or reuse them for their next order. David explains, "Our goal is to be practical and avoid single-use plastic, but we're not extreme about it."

They also rent out the greenhouse and rooms in the house to visiting students, who can use all the farm's facilities. Additionally, they offer guided tours for individuals and companies interested in seeing the farm.

Their project has gained international recognition. They host Erasmus+ students, trainees from Spain's Public Employment Service (SEPE), and other institutions. These visitors learn hands-on about sustainable farming, how to grow produce, and how to build the farm's structures. Finca Encuentro also partners with universities in Germany and Romania, and with language schools across Europe.

David and Patrick believe the key is patience and working with nature, not against it. They hope to inspire educators and the public to adopt these sustainable practices in their own lives, fostering a greener world for future generations. "We are part of a beautiful world, and we want to preserve it," they conclude.