Deliciousness as a development tool: A Brazilian tribe moves to save a heritage plant by feeding it to the world

Published by Indian Country Today in 2004For more on topics like this, see my book, American Apartheid: The Native American Struggle....


São Paolo, Brazil — The problem and the solution may have been local, but the acclaim has been global. During the mid-Nineties, Adolfo Verá Mirim, leader of Rio Silveira, a Guaraní village in Brazil’s Sao Paulo State, and president of the state’s council of indigenous people, noticed that the Jucara palm was becoming scarce in the tropical forest surrounding his home. To save the tall, slender tree, which is central to Guaraní cosmology, Mirim convinced his community and surrounding ones to stop cutting it down for its edible and medicinally valuable core, or heart.

He then began a replanting project — cultivating seedlings in his home garden and placing them throughout the forest with the help of fellow villagers. The venture was an unusual one for the Guaraní, who historically collected palms in the wild, but did not plant them.

The palms and the project flourished. Eventually, Mirim collaborated with Maurizio Fonseca, coordinator of São Paulo State’s Center for Native Issues and a consultant to the Guaraní, on an application for assistance from Slow Food, a 65,000-member consumer organization that is based in Italy but supports artisanal producers worldwide.

Italian journalist Carlo Petrini founded Slow Food nearly two decades ago under circumstances that have become legendary. Petrini was so horrified to see a McDonald’s opening in Rome that he contacted wealthy Italian winemakers for help in defending his country’s traditional foods and refined way of life against the fast-food invasion. It wasn’t just the poor quality of the fare that shocked him; he also objected to the industrialization of agriculture that makes a McDonald’s meal so cheap.

“If we wish to enjoy the pleasure this world can give us, we have to strike a balance with nature,” Petrini has said. Since then, the organization has sought to save the world by teaching people to savor it — to marry enjoyment with responsibility — via gourmet eating clubs, a travel service, courses, a magazine, and the Ark of Taste, an ever-lengthening catalog of the planet’s most delicious, most carefully produced chow. North American foods that have made the list include Iroquois White Corn, from the Seneca community at Cattaraugus, and Navajo-Churro sheep, with their lean, tender meat.

Bottom line? These foods taste good, says Anya Fernald, Program Director of the Slow Food Foundation for Biodiversity, which the parent organization spun off to invest directly in worthy projects: “At Slow Food, we begin with the plate.”

So, to decide whether to support the Guaraní effort, the organization’s staffers first tasted the tender, crunchy palm hearts, which have a flavor reminiscent of celery. Then they visited Rio Silveira, saw the replanting efforts, and finally dubbed the plant not just an entry in the Ark of Taste, but a “presidia,” which is their term for an endangered, culturally important food that is deserving of investment.

The Jucara palm joins presidia from many nations — Ethiopia, Madagascar, Great Britain, Mexico, Australia, and more. The first Brazilian presidia was guaranà, a berry that contains a caffeine-like substance and is gathered in the forest by the Sateré Mawé tribe; it was honored in 2002. That year, the annual Slow Food Award for the Defense of Biodiversity went to Brazil’s Krâho tribe for replanting its heritage pôhypey corn, thus breathing new life into its traditional farming methods and culture. In 2003, the prize went to a North American community, the White Earth Band of Chippewa, for its protection of true (not hybridized or paddy-grown) wild rice.

In about a decade, when the newly planted Jucara palms are mature, Slow Food and Brazil’s Ministry for Agricultural Development will help the tribe bring the hearts first to a local market, then to international ones. In the meantime, the two groups — which have just signed an agreement to assist artisanal Brazilian producers — are helping the Guaraní to commercialize faster growing palms and to involve more villages in replanting the all-important Jucara type.

In the Slow Food universe, though, nothing is rushed. Projects, like fruits and vegetables, need time to mature. “We’re working toward sustainable development,” said Fernald. “We wouldn’t want to stress out a community and make them import workers. We’re happy to let everyone go slow.”

In that spirit, discerning gastronomes will sample Jucara palm hearts and other delights at the Slow Food’s annual food fair, Salone del Gusto (Hall of Taste), which will take place October 21–25 in Turin, Italy. When the snacking is over, deals may be struck with distributors seeking to expand their offerings from the vast buffet of unusual foods.

Mirim, who will travel to Turin, said, “It’s important to get involved in the partnerships, but most important is the work in the community and the effect that the restoration of the palm will have on our children and on the future of our culture.”

c. Stephanie Woodard; image of the Jucara palm leaf courtesy Shutterstock.

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