The Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food has launched the application period for young agricultural professionals to enroll in the training stays of the program "Cultiva 2026". The processing of applications will be carried out through the electronic headquarters of the department and will remain open until September 15. The stays will begin to take place starting in January 2027.
According to the Ministry itself, this edition of the program has an initial financial allocation of 1.2 million euros, which can be increased, intended to cover the costs of accommodation, food, and travel for participants during the duration of the training.
In addition, the young people who are selected will receive an additional compensation intended to cover replacement costs, so that another person can take care of the attention and management of their farm during their absence.
On the Ministry's website, a catalog with 300 host farms is available, spread across all autonomous communities. These are farms that stand out for their innovative nature, productive means, business model, and social, environmental, and climatic characteristics.
This catalog also includes a search engine that allows filtering the spots by autonomous community, dates, and type of agricultural production. The stays are organized through entities such as Asaja, Asoporcel, Agro-food Cooperatives, COAG, FSIM, UPA, and UDU.
Requirements to access the program
The training stays of the Cultiva program are aimed at young agricultural professionals who are farm holders up to 40 years old, as well as those who are 41 or older and have joined the activity in the last five years.
Participants can choose farms with similar or different productions to theirs, regardless of the sector, and located anywhere in the national territory. If they have participated in previous editions, they cannot return to stay in the same farms they have already attended.
In the allocation of spots, priority is given to women, to young people who have recently joined agricultural activity, and to those who have not participated in previous calls, as the department has emphasized.
Likewise, the regulations require that the plans submitted by the collaborating entities ensure the inclusion of operations led by women as "a necessary requirement for them to be admitted."
The Ministry has highlighted the evolution of the program since it was launched as a pilot project in 2020, a year in which 13 young people participated, until reaching the 363 planned for the 2026 edition, which represents more than 900 accumulated beneficiaries since its creation.