Agustín Carrión García’s family has cultivated grapes for as many generations as he can remember in his native Jumilla, a small town in southern Spain. For this farmer, “the sun is life itself.”

The difficult economics of running small family farms inspired Agustín and some of his neighbors to expand the family businesses by supplementing grapes with a new crop … apples? No. Wheat? No. Agustín began harvesting electricity from the sun. This expansion was made possible because of Spain’s incentive program for solar and wind businesses. The electricity generated from the farm is sold back to the local utility through the cooperative. Their farm is part of a larger solar-power “ecosystem:” Jumilla is also home to one of the world’s largest photovoltaic solar farms, which generates enough energy to power the entire town. “If we all unite our efforts to produce clean energy,” says Agustín, we can end our dependence on fossil fuels, stop carbon being released into the atmosphere, and “maintain the circle of life.”

The choice to use solar energy has paid off. The solar farm generates enough income for Agustín to successfully continue to use sustainable farming practices. “What’s most important to us,” he says, “is to take care of the environment, so we won’t destroy what our fathers and our fathers’ fathers generated, and we can pass on this legacy to our children.”