Its facilities have hosted over a hundred young food producers from around Spain at the 3rd Spain’s Young Cooperative Members Meeting, a series of conferences revolving around important topics for professionals in rural areas, such as sustainability, leadership or the recruitment of the newer generation to the primary sector.
Cuatro Rayas has shared with the meeting attendees its experience encouraging the generational renewal within the cooperative, which takes shape through the ‘Cuatro Rayas Envero Commission—a group that gathers the children of the winegrower members.
La Seca, 27 October 2022.- This week, the cooperative Bodega Cuatro Rayas welcomes into its facilities—located in the town of La Seca in the province of Valladolid—a group consisting of about 120 young professionals representing cooperative groupings in the agri-food field. The meeting, organised by Spanish Agri-food Cooperatives in cooperation with URCACYL, Spain’s Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food and Banco Santander, has brought together young people from across Spain to share ideas and discuss the support actions and measures to promote the recruitment of younger generations to agriculture and livestock farming, environmental and social sustainability in rural areas or cooperatives’ role within the agri-food industry.
During the course of the meeting, in addition to sharing experiences about their professional activities, the attendees could experience first-hand the ways Bodega Cuatro Rayas uses to ensure sustainability and generational renewal in the winegrowing environment, as well as taste some of the most emblematic brands of the winery, leading producer of quality white wines in DO Rueda. Furthermore, the participants discovered the cooperative winery’s experiences promoting generational renewal through the actions carried out by the ‘Cuatro Rayas Envero Commission» guided by representatives of the cooperative winery such as Óscar de Íscar, a winegrower member of the cooperative, member of the Governing Council and Castilla y León representative at Spain’s Agri-food Cooperative’s Young Work Group; Ignacio Martín Obregón, President of Cuatro Rayas; Juan Frías, President of the ‘Envero Commission’; Concha Hernández – DIRSE of the winery and coordinator of the ‘Envero Commission’; and Vicente Orihuela, Managing Director of Bodega Cuatro Rayas.
COMMITMENT TO SUSTAINABILITY IN RURAL AREAS
Bodega Cuatro Rayas implements its commitment to social sustainability, seeking ways to promote generational renewal within the cooperative. In this regard, and following its ‘green & social’ philosophy based on the interdependency of the environmental welfare and the people who live there, the winery has established the ‘Cuatro Rayas Envero Commission’. This group consists of both the youngest cooperative members and the children of the members so that those who will inherit the duty of keeping Cuatro Rayas’ legacy alive understand and take an active part in the winery’s day-to-day providing their perspective and learning from their predecessors the passion for wine and viticulture as their livelihood. To do this, the youngest ones meet periodically in pieces of training, meetings and other activities where representatives of the different departments and areas of the winery participate and, also, they follow their plan that includes the Cooperative representation role in young cooperative members meetings both at national and international level.
