Our case study person is a professional with a background in economics, who belongs to a family with long experience in agriculture, who owns an average Olive and Cereal farm. While working in Madrid in a multinational company, his elderly father falls ill, a situation that makes it difficult for him to continue farming. For this reason, our case study person decides to leave his job to take over the family business.
From the beginning, our promoter found himself alone, with only the help of his foreman. The process of adaptation was complicated, being used to planning and working in very professional teams, he finds himself in a field where conditions are uncertain and where he has to adapt to new situations all the time.
From the beginning, he shows a total lack of technical knowledge, he does not know when the tasks have to be carried out, he does not know the characteristics of the farm, the importance of irrigation and how to plan them, the nutritional and phytosanitary products, as well as the processes of commercialisation and negotiation with suppliers.
In these early stages he is lost, frustrated, and has to delegate many of the decisions to the farm workers, who help him on the basis of how things have always been done. Our person tries to learn, but the need to adapt means that he does not fully understand the routines and processes. He perceives that every year is different, that suppliers provide him with contradictory information, and he ends up not understanding what criteria he must apply in his decision-making processes. All this ends up frustrating him, causing stress and permanent confusion.
One day, talking to another young farmer, he tells him that he attended the Marmolejo School of Vocational Training for two years, obtaining certification as a Higher Agricultural Technician. He sees this new colleague as a well-prepared person with clear ideas, and since then he has not stopped thinking about whether the training could help him to resolve his confusion. He thinks that dedicating two years and combining work and training is going to be complex. However, he prefers to take on this extra work rather than continue with the situation he is in. So, he decides to enrol in Marmolejo the following year and start a training process that should give him the knowledge, skills and abilities to manage the farm according to his own criteria.
