WHAT YOU HAVE TO KNOW BEFORE YOU PLAN A FARM TOUR TO SPAIN
While British agriculture has felt almost static, Andalucía’s agri-food exports have grown by 50% since 2018
And the Alentejo in Portugal (the other area we cover) has some equally surprising statistics.
Which is why you can get so much more out of a few days on a farm business study tour here – than if you continue looking for inspiration closer to home.
The best time to come is autumn, winter or spring. (Check out our events and seasons planner below.)
Flights in this part of the year are often cheaper than a train ticket in your own country. Rural accommodation here is readily available
…and why wouldn’t you sit in front of a roaring oak fire in a beautiful turismo rural in crisp sunny Portugal ….
With an itinerary to visit two inspirational farms tomorrow.
Before heading over the border into the Spanish sierra for the rest of your journey, and discovering the farms and rural businesses behind the incredible growth statistics.
As a general rule we suggest the study tours have a minimum of 3 full days and a maximum of 5. You can allow days on either side for travelling depending on how flights work out for you.
Choose your favourite season to visit. Some ideas before we start planning your trip...
OCTOBER–DECEMBER
After the Vendimia | Alentejo
Once the intensity of the grape harvest has passed, it’s a great time to visit Alentejo wineries. Producers have more time to talk, while there’s still plenty happening in the cellars.
1–6 OCTOBER 2026
Zafra International Livestock Fair | Extremadura
One of Spain’s major agricultural gatherings, bringing together livestock, farming businesses, machinery and rural industries. An ideal starting point for a wider farming study journey through Extremadura and Portugal.
OCTOBER 2026
Iberian Ham Fair | Aracena
Meet producers and discover the world behind one of Spain’s most celebrated foods. Combine the fair with visits exploring the Iberian pig, the dehesa, traditional curing and premium food production.
NOVEMBER–DECEMBER 2026
Olive Harvest & New-Season Oil
See the olive harvest in action and visit producers exploring quality, premium branding, direct sales and visitor experiences around one of the region’s oldest crops.
WINTER 2026–27
The Dehesa in Winter
Discover the montanera, when Iberian pigs graze beneath the holm and cork oaks feeding on acorns. An opportunity to understand the farming system behind premium jamón ibérico de bellota.
MARCH 2027
Zafra Spring Fair | Extremadura
A spring gathering with a strong focus on livestock, breeds and the dehesa. Particularly interesting for farming groups looking at livestock production and traditional grazing systems.
Spain and Portugal, businesses are approaching familiar challenges in different ways — adding value to what they produce, finding new income streams and adapting to a changing climate.
We’ll help you discover the businesses, people and ideas most relevant to your own challenges, interests and ambitions.
What you can learn about planning your tour from this olive oil example…
We’re not choosing olive oil because there is more to experience in this industry than any other.
It’s a way of showing you how much diversity there is within each sector.
At one end of the olive oil spectrum, you can see large agribusinesses where almost every inch of fertile soil has been planted and irrigated. Olives are harvested using state-of-the-art machinery before being pressed, bottled and distributed on an industrial scale.
At the other end, a growing number of small producers are bringing ancient olive orchards back into production. Some still harvest their olives using traditional nets, take them to a small local mill and sell the finished oil in beautifully branded glass bottles or metal tins.
People who understand olive oil will go out of their way to find these traditional oils, which can have a distinctive character and peppery taste.
Between these two extremes are many other businesses worth exploring.
You find businesses converting part of their production to organic, and other larger scale farms experimenting with different ways to extract more value from their olive groves.
We understand that most of you will be coming from cooler climes and olives probably aren’t high on your list of alternative crops!
But we can find this same spread of business types across the majority of sectors here.
There is creativity in the way that farmers are getting more value out of what they already have on their farms
Bring your group on a journey of discovery
Perhaps you’re part of a farmer discussion group that already meets regularly to share ideas. You would like to travel together, see how farmers elsewhere are responding to familiar challenges and give yourselves something new to discuss.
Maybe you’re a farm consultant—or run a business with farming clients—and you have noticed that many of them are trying to work through the same issue. You want to take that conversation out of the meeting room and show them how businesses in another country are approaching it.
If you’re involved with a farming co-operative, you may be looking further ahead. What information, ideas and business models could help you make the best choices for the future of your members?
For a larger food or drink business, the question may be different again. Perhaps your team needs to step away from its usual environment, encounter businesses operating at very different scales and begin generating ideas for your organisation’s next move.
How we plan your group journey
1. Start with a free discovery call
You tell us about your initial ideas and what your group is hoping to gain from the journey.
This no pressure call allows both of us to decide whether Slow Lane Spain is the right fit for you.
You don’t need to have everything worked out before this call. We can help you explore what is possible.
2. Develop your journey with us
The next step is a one-hour planning call where we get into the detail.
We will talk about your group, your preferred dates, the subjects you want to explore. You can let us know about any particular challenges or questions within your industry.
Using that information, we will develop a suggested journey for you. This can include:
Your proposed route and accommodation options.
Transport quotes and details.
The farms and businesses we recommend on each day.
Details of where you will need translation and where good english is spoken.
Whether you would like us to accompany you for part or all of your journey.
Suitable arrival and departure airports and flight options
Prices for taking your group journey through this planning stage start from £500.
At the end of it, you will have a carefully researched plan, in a downloadable PDF document, that you can use as the basis for organising the journey yourself.
3. Ask us to arrange the journey
If you would like us to take the planning further, we can go ahead and arrange the visits, accommodation and transport for you.
We can also accompany your group throughout the journey or join you for the particular days and visits where local support, introductions or translation will be most valuable.
The cost of this stage will depend on the size of your group, the length of the journey and how much help you would like from us. We will discuss the options with you and provide a clear quotation before making any arrangements.
What about flights?
We do not generally book individual flights, but we will research suitable options and design your itinerary around realistic arrival and departure times.
Some airlines offer a group-booking service. If this would be helpful, we can investigate the available options with you.
Travel independently
A personalised journey designed around you.
It’s suitable for groups of up to 5 people. (You will need to hire a car from the airport where you are starting.)
We begin with a one on one planning call.
This is where you can tell us about your own farm or business.
We want to understand the decisions you are making for your business in the coming months.
You can let us know if there are things you would particularly like to see.
You may already have dates or a destination in mind, or you may want us to help you decide where to begin.
We will then choose businesses and visits around your interests and create a personalised route through Spain, Portugal or both.
Everything will be brought together in a detailed itinerary. This will include:
Your route and recommendations for accommodation. (This can be an important part of the plan if you are involved in rural tourism)
We also come up with recommendations for places to eat. Again this can be inspirational – for example a restaurant on a farm, which has turned its innacesible location into a selling point.
We generally recommend 2 businesses to visit each day of your study tour.
We will make up to 2 calls ahead on your behalf – to make tricky reservations or get past a language barrier.
Within your itinerary we give you a brief of questions to ask specific businesses to get the most out of each experience.
You will receive your itinerary as a PDF download to take with you on your travels.
You will book the flights yourself – but we will help you research suitable flights for your planned route.
Give us a call to find out more.
Wake up to views like these in the Sierra de Aracena.
Home to the famous acorn and grassfed jamon
What could you discover?
Every journey starts with the questions that matter to you. These are just some of the ideas and challenges we could explore together.
1. Where are the unexpected opportunities?
Sometimes the most interesting opportunities are the ones you wouldn’t have thought to look for.
Hydroponic farms changing what can be grown and where. Wine matured 30 metres beneath the water. Modern co-operative wineries using centuries-old techniques to create something distinctive and more valuable.
We seek out the businesses doing something unexpected, get behind how it works and ask the question: could there be an idea here for you?
2. How do you create more value from what you already have?
Growing or producing something is only the beginning. Across Spain and Portugal, businesses are creating more value through processing, ageing, branding, provenance, direct selling and visitor experiences.
Follow the journey from grapes to wine, milk to cheese, olives to premium oil or livestock to celebrated regional foods.
Where along the journey from producer to customer is the value being created — and could you capture more of it?
3. Can difficult land become something exceptional?
Some landscapes aren’t suited to maximising production. That doesn’t mean they can’t create extraordinary value.
Explore the dehesa, where extensive grazing, holm oaks and acorns underpin Jamón Ibérico de Bellota, alongside other enterprises including cork, livestock and rural tourism.
Sometimes the opportunity isn’t to make the land produce more, but to make what it naturally produces worth more.
4. What could your next chapter look like?
A farm can become a place to stay. A winery can become a destination. A food producer can sell an experience as well as a product.
And sometimes a completely new business can become the beginning of a different way of life.
Discover people creating livelihoods through rural accommodation, campsites, food businesses, experiences, farm shops, restaurants, events and other enterprises built around the places they live.
Whether you’re looking for another income stream from what you already have, or wondering what it might take to start something completely new, come and see how other people have made it work.
What could your next chapter look like?
5. How are businesses adapting to a changing climate?
Heat, drought and pressure on water are everyday business realities in many parts of Spain and Portugal.
Discover how businesses are responding through smarter water management, irrigation, different crops and farming systems, and new ways of working with the climate rather than against it.
What can businesses elsewhere learn from places that have been adapting to challenging conditions for generations?
6. Can working together create more value?
Some businesses can achieve more together than they ever could alone.
Across Spain and Portugal, co-operatives and producer groups allow farmers and food producers to share investment, processing, specialist knowledge and routes to market — while giving smaller businesses access to opportunities that might otherwise be beyond their reach.
From modern wineries built around generations of local knowledge to producer organisations supplying international markets, sometimes the most important innovation isn’t what you produce, but how you work together.
Fly into Seville, Faro, Lisbon or Málaga and we'll help you plan your journey from there.
LET'S SEE WHERE IT LEADS
Tell us a little about your business, what you’d like to explore and how you’d like to travel. We’ll help you work out the best way to begin.
Call Heather on +44 7801 335118
Email contact@slowlanespain.com
WhatsApp +351 925 616 222
Some of the places to discover along your route
Got an idea in mind?
Tell us a little about what you’d like to explore and when you’re thinking of travelling.
LET’S START A CONVERSATION
Call Heather on +44 7801 335118
Email contact@slowlanespain.com
WhatsApp +351 925 616 222
