Thoughts on the first half of 2026

Written by Gonzalo Úrculo, farmer, CEO and co-founder of CrowdFarming.

Note: I wrote this text as an internal document to align the people who work at CrowdFarming day to day. For a couple of years now, I have also shared it with our community of farmers, customers, and suppliers. This way, we manage to highlight everyone’s effort, recognize where we fail, and celebrate the successes achieved together.

Has sustainability gone out of fashion?

Fewer and fewer company statements on sustainability are being read on LinkedIn or in the press. It’s as if sustainability managers have now transformed into AI gurus.

It seems so. It looks very much like the sustainability that was done for outward appearances has lost momentum in the corporate world. And this, make no mistake, is positive because it reduces noise and allows actions to speak for themselves.

Real and concrete sustainability is more alive than ever at CrowdFarming. During this first semester, we have achieved:

• 2,969 farmers selling their harvests at a fair price.
• Conducting soil analysis on 47 new farms to measure the impact of regenerative practices, and designing an agronomic program together with the farmers to increase their natural fertility in the long term. With these 47, there are now 100 farms within our regenerative organic farming program.
• €1,794,784.43 in sales of fruits and vegetables in conversion to organic. Receiving a fair, predictable, and stable price is especially key when a farmer is in the delicate phase of conversion to organic because their trees usually experience a drop in productivity.
• Sales of All Is Good (our brand of processed products) have increased by 24% compared to last year. All Is Good products are produced with surplus harvests or sensitive fruit that cannot travel to its destination because it could rot on the way. It is a way for all fruit and vegetables to have commercial value.

And furthermore, we are starting to see the results of our efforts at an economic level. For the first time in 5 years, we have finished the first half of the year with positive EBITDA, and growing at double digits. This shows us that betting on the direct sale of organic products is profitable.

To achieve this positive EBITDA, we have all had to make sacrifices and prioritize spending well. An example of this is that we have unsubscribed from the B Corp seal. It was a difficult decision because this seal has positive aspects. Renewing the seal cost €16,000 this year and with a cool head, although it’s cool to have a company audit the sustainability of your operations, we saw that we weren’t getting the most out of it and that this money (a scarce resource in our startup) could be dedicated to more farmer training and to raising the salaries of some profiles in our team.

Successes to celebrate from the first half of the year

Successes must be celebrated. Especially those you pursue, but also those you achieve almost by accident.

I have found that when you surround yourself with good people, the mission that unites you is pure, motivating, and ambitious; along the way, good things happen that you didn’t even count on.

Something curious happened to us this semester that made us very happy. We don’t have a goal of reaching a certain percentage of young farmers selling on CrowdFarming, but we were very excited to see that, naturally, we have managed to get this metric well above the industry average.

Young farmers: 42% at CrowdFarming vs. 12% average in the agro industry.

One of the successes we have fought hardest for together and of which we can be proud is the reduction of delivery incidents, especially during the summer months. Thanks to field audits, good coordination between field and logistics teams, and proactive communication with customers, we have managed to reduce reported incidents from 3.5% in 2025 to 2.9% in 2026 during the second quarter.

When you work with fresh produce and don’t apply fungal treatments to preserve its appearance, having incidents is part of the game. But every year we must continue implementing new processes that allow us to improve on both fronts: prevention and rapid reaction.

Fewer incidents translate into fewer frustrated customers. And this year the numbers are very positive: we have gone from having 529,691 active customers to 534,452 with much lower marketing spend.

Our position on subsidies

Subsidies granted in a prolonged and generic way do not help farmers. Some farmer friends get angry with me when I share this opinion.

“Don’t say that, Gonzalo. If they take away the subsidies, the countryside will die.” “Without subsidies, supermarkets would bring everything from abroad because they wouldn’t pay what it actually costs to produce here. We wouldn’t be able to work.” “You dare to say that because you sell online and have a good margin, but otherwise, the numbers wouldn’t add up for you.”

The more I know about market dynamics, the more certain I am that we farmers would be better off if the countryside didn’t receive so many subsidies.

Agricultural aid (the Common Agricultural Policy) accounts for nearly a third of all EU spending. And yet, between 60% and 70% of European soils are depleted, having lost fertility at an accelerated rate in recent years. It is becoming increasingly difficult for us to produce food.

As always, there are exceptions. When a subsidy tackles a specific problem, it is useful: soft loans for a young farmer who wants to buy a few hectares or a tractor, one-off aid for an area affected by an extreme weather event, or training in organic farming.

But subsidies just for farming to try to make European crops price-competitive is a way that, among other things, allows supermarkets to buy cheaper. European products must differentiate themselves through quality, and by quality, we mean being more organic, more nutritious, tastier, and fresher.

This system gives the consumer a wrong idea about the price they pay for food. They pay one part when they buy, where they can choose the type of farming and the quality of the product. The other, invisible part, they pay with their taxes, where others choose for them what type of farming is funded.

With fewer subsidies, perhaps there would be lower taxes and more purchasing power for the consumer. Or that money could even be used to educate society on the importance of good nutrition or greater environmental awareness.

A well-educated consumer has a more powerful effect than any subsidy. Sustaining a system with artificially low prices through subsidies will cost us all (farmers and consumers) more and more.

On the other hand, by trying to solve one problem, you are creating others: subsidies can make it difficult for young people to become farm owners. More expensive farms with retired farmers. I have nothing against a retiree being a farmer. On the contrary, there is no more dignified profession, and I myself intend to dedicate myself to farming as long as my body holds out.

But if 33% of those receiving a subsidy are over 65 (and also receive a well-earned pension), the price at which they will be willing to sell their harvest will be lower than the 30-year-old farmer who does not receive a pension, who probably has one or two mortgages (home and farm) and school fees to pay.

Perhaps the measures to “protect” us from competition from other continents are generating an internal lack of competition that creates inefficiency in the agricultural market.

I know it’s a complex issue, but I trust that giving it visibility can raise awareness and help us build a fairer, more attractive, and accessible supply chain for new generations together.

Upcoming launch of Harvest Pass

Well-educated customers and farmers sustain the transition to organic better than any subsidy. When a customer buys directly, they are choosing the type of farming they want. When a farmer receives a fair price for their crops, they have the security and freedom to invest in the most effective way to improve their soil, rather than the most effective way to get a subsidy.

Over the last year, we have organized 10 courses to explain key concepts of regenerative organic farming to 160 farmers and share success stories they can replicate or at least be inspired by.

In addition to training, we support farmers with soil analysis and technical guidance. At the same time, we fuel demand by raising awareness and investing in research that we then share with an audience of 2.5 million people. We do all this through the 1% for the Soil program we founded in 2024: we allocate 1% of sales from regenerative organic farm products, taking it from our margin, without affecting what the farmer receives or what the consumer pays.

Over the coming months, we are going to launch the largest action to support regenerative organic farming in our history: we will invite our entire community to be part of this. On one hand, a free membership to the 1% for the Soil community to stay up to date with developments on the ground and in the regenerative movement at a European level, and to propose ideas on how to invest the funds. On the other hand, Harvest Pass, a paid membership that complements the funding of this program in exchange for volume savings on purchases and early access to the entire farmer catalog.

Our biggest mistakes (or the most expensive lessons)

In direct sales, logistics and quality audit failures that result in the receipt of a product in poor condition are the most expensive mistakes. Not because of the financial refund for the affected order, but because of the loss of trust from the customer who suffers it, especially if it is one of their first orders.

We have a quality team that tests and applies new processes to reduce these cases, but in parallel, we have launched a new, more agile and simple service in the user area to open an incident if something arrives in poor condition. We launched it in July and it is giving very good results, both in terms of simplicity for the user and in better understanding how the incident occurred (thanks to the information and photos provided by the customer).

Climatologically, a variable that always forces us to have a plan B or even a plan C or D, this semester found us better prepared. Even so, during the month of May, our farmers ran out of quality blueberries, and to avoid incidents, we had to propose changing the composition of some mixed boxes. This caused a spike in order cancellations in our monthly mixed fruit subscription.

It was a shame because until then we hadn’t stopped growing in the number of households that receive a box with 3 seasonal fruits every month. In May, 3,333 out of a total of 70,927 subscribers cancelled. It is the organic fruit subscription box with the most subscribers, and this allows us to secure demand for more than 45 farmers.

Rethinking tree adoptions

Tree adoptions were decisive in my early days as a young farmer.

In 2010, together with my brother, we recovered an orange grove belonging to my grandfather in Bétera, near Valencia. Half of the trees were sick with phytophthora and when we made the switch to organic (with very little experience), they couldn’t cope and died.

The situation was: half of the farm productive, the other half dead. A grant awarded for being a young farmer was slow to arrive because Valencia had gone into default (it didn’t have the money to pay the grants that the EU had awarded).

We had to replant more than 10,000 orange trees but we didn’t have the money to finance it or the sales security if we did.

At that point, quite on the edge, we created and launched the idea of adopting an orange tree: customers paid for the annual maintenance and chose a name for their tree. We planted it and reserved the orange harvest of an adult tree for them, which they received during the season.

Photo from 2015 with one of the first adopted trees.

For us and for 259 farms today, adoptions represent a guarantee of sales at a fixed price. Thanks to adoptions, farmers have been able (and are being able) to certify their crops as organic.

The benefits that adoptions have had for farmers have always been very clear, but what about for consumers? Besides being able to have a tree with their name, have we been able to explain all the advantages?

During this first semester, we have been redefining the system to make it more understandable and favorable for consumers. A person who adopts a tree will get the best price, preference if the harvest is limited, will receive agronomic information on the evolution of their tree, and will be able to visit the farm for free.

We have set a goal for more than 50,000 trees to transition to organic during this second semester.

Adoptions were the beginning and they are also the future for the direct sale of organic products to continue growing.

We make regenerative organic farming possible for farmers and accessible for consumers.