By Sibélia Zanon
PORTEIRINHA, Minas Gerais — Beneath the shade of the umbu tree, Maria Neves tells Maria José that ripe umbu fruit is like a woman on the brink of giving birth: It demands immediate attention. “Umbu doesn’t take a day off; it’s like milking cows, it’s every day,” says Maria Neves Almeida, a Caatinga dweller (or caatingueira) from the Furado da Roda community in the municipality of Porteirinha.
Maria José dos Santos, known as Zezé in those semiarid valleys of northern Minas Gerais, agrees. “You’re there, under nature, harvesting. There’s no better wealth, no better health.”
Zezé, an extrativist leader in the region, recounts that for decades, the livelihood of the small-scale farmer came from cotton. With the infestation of the cotton boll weevil (Anthonomus grandis), a type of beetle, in the 1990s, everything changed. “When we saw the cotton turn out this way, we thought it was the end of the road; everyone would starve,” she says.
But it was in this infested territory that the traditional communities of northern Minas Gerais found hope in tastes and smells forgotten since childhood: native fruits.
The coquinho azedo (sour coconut) is one of the fruits rescued by traditional peoples in the north of Minas Gerais, improving the health of people and biomes. Image by Sibélia Zanon.
“In this season, everyone is harvesting the fruits, and the cooperative processes them into pulp. Since then, there has been a significant improvement,” says Zezé. “Back when we harvested cotton, it was at the cost of poison. Many people died from poisoning. Nowadays, people work with fruits without poison. So, health is much better. They enjoy those fruits, save them to make natural juice. That’s how it is now, people have given up on soft drinks.”
In the transition area between Caatinga and Cerrado, Caatingueiros, Geraizeiros, Veredeiros, Quilombolas and Indigenous people have been recovering native fruits such as umbu, buriti, coquinho azedo and pequi. The latter carries the reputation of being the “meat of the hinterland” due to the richness of nutrients and proteins it contains in its pulp.
In addition to generating income and improving the health of traditional communities, the appreciation of fruit has benefited the health of biomes: Families and biodiversity alike are rooted in a territory threatened by livestock farming, charcoal production, eucalyptus and soy monocultures and the increasing implementation of large-scale photovoltaic solar power plant projects.
Operating since 2003, the Grande Sertão Cooperative, in collaboration with universities, local cooperatives and the financial support of partners such as WWF and the Banco do Brasil Foundation, serves as the primary purchaser of fruit production from small-scale farmers within a 600-kilometer (373-mile) radius, spanning 36 municipalities, involving more than 280 cooperative members and supporting approximately 2,000 families.
Maria José dos Santos, from the community of Riachão, is an extractivist leader in the municipality of Porteirinha, Minas Gerais. Image by Sibélia Zanon.
Meat from the hinterland
“We developed an eye for the Cerrado. We’re always looking at those fruits that will produce from now on. We’re checking if they’re blooming, if they’ll yield a good harvest,” recounts Jorge Martins Corrêa, a Quilombola born and raised in the 1960s in the Quilombo da Onça, where approximately 45 families now make a living through family farming and extractivism in Januária. “Since we acquired this knowledge, we’re constantly harvesting to sell, you know? The coquinho azedo, the buriti, the cajuí, the pequi.”
“After the 1970s, the northern region of Minas Gerais went through massive eucalyptus plantations, leading to the aggressive clearing of the Cerrado. Consequently, we’ve been losing vegetation, biodiversity, and water. How do you sustain the meat of the hinterland?” says Sarah de Mello Teixeira, who oversees interinstitutional relations at the Núcleo do Pequi, a network of partner associations and cooperatives in 16 municipalities in the north of Minas Gerais, which strengthens the pequi production chain.
In 1992, civil society organized itself and pushed for the creation of a law making the pequi tree immune from logging. Nearly 10 years later, in 2001, a state law established the Pro-Pequi Program, which values the fruit’s production chain, from collection to commercialization. Incentives for purchasing products from family farming through the Food Acquisition Program and the National School Feeding Program have also played and continue to play a significant role in restoring this native fruit of the Cerrado to its prominent place and providing security to extractivists, who sometimes rely on the pequi harvest as their main source of income for the year.
Salto, in the municipality of Coração de Jesus (Minas Gerais), is one of the communities where Núcleo do Pequi operates. The network of community enterprises involves more than 20 organizations. Image by Sibélia Zanon.
“We processed almost 700,000 kilos [1.5 million pounds] of pequi in the last harvest,” says José Fabio Soares, a food engineer and technician at the Grande Sertão Cooperative, referring to the harvest from December 2022 to February 2023. “What was processed was converted into oil, frozen pequi and pulp.”
The cooperative aims to grow from the 40,000 dozen pequi currently sold to 200,000 in the next two years. It is estimated that more than 50 million reais ($9.9 million) circulated from pequi extractivism in northern Minas Gerais in 2020.
Sarah Teixeira points out that the sale of Minas Gerais pequi at the Ceasa market in Goiânia has yielded more profits than pumpkin and coconut and was close to oranges.
“Extractivism will yield much more than a meter of charcoal and will yield every year,” says Adailton Lopes Viana, president of the Association of Users of the Rio dos Cochos Sub-Basin, founded in 2003, with pequi as its main product. “And then you can plant another pequi tree, two more, three more, and bring it closer to your backyard, closer to your property. Once you start seeing pequi as potential, you won’t want to deforest, you’ll want to increase the population.”
Processing pequi at Assusbac, an association that brings together small farmers, beekeepers and agro-extractivists from eight communities in rural Januária. Image by Sibélia Zanon.
A door, a window and a musical organ
Half of Pedro Pereira da Mota’s monthly family income is ensured by the coquinho azedo fruit.
“The other 50% we manage; we raise a chicken, a pig, plant a little farm, plant some corn,” says Pedro. “Since the cooperative appeared, extracting coquinho has become much better. Now we collect and deliver directly to the cooperative; they sell it, pay us a good price.”
Sueli Rodrigues Santos also belongs to the Cooperative of Small Agro-extractive Producers of the Peruaçu Valley (Cooperuaçu), and the money from the first harvest of coquinho azedo she sold made her work easier. “At the time, I got about 300 or 400 reais [$60-$80] so I thought, ‘You know what I’m going to do with this money? I’m going to buy a bicycle.'” The bicycle helped with collecting coquinho in the following harvest.
The main purpose of the coquinho azedo was to feed cattle. Today, it is transformed into juice pulp securing a significant portion of the income for extractivist families like Pedro Pereira da Mota. Image by Sibélia Zanon.
Sour coconut, with its peak harvest season between October and December, is used to produce juice pulp and beer. Cooperuaçu’s main buyer is the Grande Sertão Cooperative, which takes the coquinho azedo and other fruit varieties to the pulp factory, where more than 200 tons of native fruits and some backyard fruit varieties are processed each year. Additionally, the Xakriabá Indigenous people cultivate coquinho azedo in São João das Missões and sell it to Grande Sertão.
“Now we make money from what we used to waste,” says Wanderlandia da Silva Rodrigues, a farmer who now works at the Grande Sertão pulp factory in the municipality of Mirabela. She has earned a substantial income by selling boxes of mangoes. A door, a window and a musical organ — her dream purchases — are among the items she acquired with her earnings. Her five children have also worked at the factory. One of her daughters is a food engineer who is researching pequi oil for her doctoral thesis.
Building the kitchen, laying flooring or buying a cupboard are common stories among extractivist women regarding their achievements across northern Minas Gerais.
Zenita Lopes Rodrigues, for example, works as a mobilizer with the “veredeiros” who collect buriti fruit in the municipality of Brasília de Minas. “Many people didn’t even have a gas stove, and through working with buriti, they managed to, you know?” says the leader, who visits producers and stores buriti shavings at her home.
Later, Grande Sertão takes the production to Montes Claros, continues with processing, and sells the oil for cosmetic use. Beyond beauty, buriti finds favor in Zenita’s hands. “Some months, I deliver over 500 sweets there in the city.”
Zenita Lopes Rodrigues hosts gatherings of extractivist women at her home, where it’s possible to enjoy buriti sweets as well as liqueurs made from various fruits grown in her backyard. Image by Sibélia Zanon.
Ripening time
Climate change and water scarcity have impacted the harvests of many fruits, including buriti. As these trees rely on moisture, there are areas where the veredas (the springs where this species grows) dry up and the trees die. Macaws and parakeets have also become more frequent visitors to the palm trees, likely due to the scarcity of other foods, destroying a large portion of the fruits. The harvests have had longer periods, but with less abundance. The veredas await the rains to then ripen and disperse the seeds.
“The cluster is fully formed. If it hasn’t rained, it remains dormant, waiting to ripen,” explains Neucy Aparecido Fagundes, agronomist and technician at Grande Sertão. “I’m speaking as if I were in the mind of the buriti tree, you see? But if the weather is dry, the plant will understand that the fruit will fall to the ground and won’t thrive.”
Almost half of the Cerrado has already been deforested. An article published in November 2023 points out that the hydrographic basins of the Cerrado are drying up and losing the capacity to supply some of Brazil’s main rivers, such as the São Francisco, the Madeira and the Tocantins. Change in land cover is one of the reasons.
Buriti paths depend on water to survive. Image by Sibélia Zanon.
“The Cerrado is the father of the waters. Of the 12 main hydrographic basins [of Brazil], eight originate or receive water from the Cerrado,” says Kolbe Soares, a conservation specialist at WWF-Brazil. “So, the biome has a super strategic importance in terms of water resources.”
Rivers becoming intermittent and dried-up springs are part of the daily landscape for family farmers. It’s now commonplace to cross bridges over rivers that once flowed but are now mere memories.
“The Pandeiros River is an important tributary of the São Francisco River that contributes significantly to the fauna, with fish from the São Francisco. And it’s a river that year after year has been reducing its flow,” says Ernane Ronie Martins, a professor at the Federal University of Minas Gerais. “Imagine a river the size of the São Francisco losing a tributary that is biologically one of the most important in the basin.” With a length of 1,811 miles, it is the fourt- largest river system on the continent and the largest river wholly within Brazil.
The increase in drilling artesian wells is evident in the region. “Today, every community that used to rely on water resources from a river or stream has to drill a well,” says Kolbe.
Highly susceptible to climate change, which accelerates its desertification, the Caatinga is the third-most deforested biome. The article highlights that the expansion of agriculture, livestock farming, and deforestation has caused drastic changes in the biome.
Given this scenario, the rescue of native fruits through the empowerment of traditional peoples in their territories, while preserving vegetation, is increasingly important.
“Today, people no longer think about cutting down fruit trees that could be providing income for them. So, that’s very good,” says Valdomiro da Mota Brito, treasurer of Cooperuaçu. “I have no doubt that we are providing a service to humanity. What we are selling here is not just fruit. We are selling a quality of life that is not just for us. It’s for the world, right?”
Pedro Pereira da Mota is an extractivist who works with his family in the Peruaçu Valley, in northern Minas Gerais. Image by Sibélia Zanon.
Banner image: The umbu that Isbeni de Jesus Rodrigues collects from the 10 trees in his backyard in Porteirinha (Minas Gerais) earns up to $6,000 reais ($1,200) per harvest. Image by Sibélia Zanon.
This story was reported by Mongabay’s Brazil team and first published here on our Brazil site on Mar. 25, 2024.
Citations:
Silva, C. D., Manzione, R. L., & Caldas, M. M. (2023). Net water flux and land use shifts across the Brazilian Cerrado between 2000 and 2019. Regional Environmental Change, 23(4). doi:10.1007/s10113-023-02127-x
Araujo, H. F., Canassa, N. F., Machado, C. C., & Tabarelli, M. (2023). Human disturbance is the major driver of vegetation changes in the caatinga dry forest region. Scientific Reports, 13(1). doi:10.1038/s41598-023-45571-9
This article was originally published on Mongabay
