Friday, September 07, 2012

Women's group greenhouse



The Brazilian government has some programs and laws that promote local, small-scale agriculture.  One of the most interesting is a law that requires at least 30% of the food for school-feeding programs to be bought from local producers.

For small-scale producers, this provides a market for their goods and can also act as an incentive for farmers to diversify from export-oriented agriculture to include local, consumption-based products.

One of the women's groups that REDE works with was doing just that. Although they all work in their families' coffee plantations, they saw this program as another revenue stream for their families.

A community member set aside a piece of land on her property to be used as the women's group's garden.

They meet once a week for workdays, and all members are required to attend. Because many of the women also have small children, they designate one member of the group each week to be responsible for taking care of the children. Another member of the group is responsible to make lunch.

Every day of the week, a different member of the group is responsible for making sure the plants get watered.

They started selling vegetables to the local school. Then other members of the community heard about the women's vegetable production and asked how they could get their hands on the veggies. So the women started selling to other people in the community.

On the day that I visited them, REDE was helping them build a greenhouse to protect their seedlings during the rainy season. The women prepared a few more beds for the garden as their husbands worked together to build the greenhouse (can't escape those gender roles).

The workday had the same atmosphere as your standard minga in Ecuador.

Everyone shows up a little late, shmoozes for a while, and then drinks some coffee. Then someone questions the rational behind the whole endeavor, proposing they should change the entire plan, before being convinced that everything will be fine with the original one. Then they notice there is a tool missing that they think they need, but then realize they can do without.

Once at the worksite, there was a lot of standing around. All the men did their best civil engineer impression when trying to measure the dimensions for the proposed project. A few people took the lead in the project as the rest of them looked on. Little by little they all joined in the fun, dividing themselves among the necessary tasks. Before you know it, lunchtime arrives.

After lunch, the group takes some time to reassemble. There are typically fewer people working in the afternoon. Extended breaks always bring a few casualties to group projects. At this point, everyone just wants to finish the project and go home. So they get really motivated and pull it together.

On a funny note, I didn't really know what we were building until I saw all the materials. I had asked the technician from REDE what we were going to be building, and she said "estufa." I thought I knew what this word meant in Portuguese. When I saw the materials we were going to use, it was clear that I had no idea what "estufa" was, but it was too late to ask the technician again.

Now I know: estufa = greenhouse. 

Thursday, September 06, 2012

The four-use stove


Many families in this region of Brazil still cook with wood stoves. They take dead wood from the forest outside and use it to cook their food. But they don't simply use their wood stoves for the fire. Instead, they get four uses out of the fire.

1. Stove
2. Oven, which is located behind the stove.
3. Hot water heater - Either there is a tank of water or the water pipes for the shower run through the chimney area.
4. After the fire is out, they take the wood ash and sprinkle it on their garden beds because it is a great soil additive.

Wednesday, September 05, 2012

Machete 2.0?

Many people believe that the only thing you need to clear a field is a machete.

They are missing a key component of the process.

Can you guess what it is from the photos below?

Photos are screen shots from "Yo Me Quedo Aqui."
If you understand Spanish and like agroecology, you should watch it here.

In addition to the blade to slice through the grass, the farmer uses a stick, hoes, or his or her hand to hold up whatever weeds he will be cutting to create tension. Otherwise, you need many more strokes to cover the same area.

My eyes were opened to a new tool last week.

We needed to go get some fuel for the wood-burning stove, check out his bee boxes, and do some general maintenance around the property. In Ecuador, the only tool that I would think of using for this work is a machete. In fact, if you tried to do this work with anything other than a machete, you would probably be laughed at and ridiculed.

The farmer walked out of his house with something that looked like a hooked machete at the end of a walking stick.

The first thought in my mind was "what is he going to do with that thing?"


After sharpening the blade, we went to check out his beehives. He sliced through the weeds that grew onto the trail with such ease. He barely had to bend over. Notice how the farmer in the first image is bending in the back, you don't have to do that with the bill hook.

Then we walked up to check out the progress on his orchard of native fruit trees. On the way, he saw some dead branches that could be used in the wood stove. With a few quick swipes, he had enough wood for a few days.

This tool, or billhook, was first used in agriculture in the middle east. According to a farmer I was working with, it is currently made out of recycled automotive transmissions. You are supposed to the sharpen the entire hooked, blade section of tool for maximum effect - which is exactly what this farmer, Ze Antonio, achieved.

Maybe it was how sharp he made the blade. Maybe it was the amount of experience he has with the billhook. But he performed every task with such ease that I came away very impressed with the tool and its potential in any garden or farm or costume of the Grim Reaper from "Scream."

I would consider brining one of these back to the States, but I don't want to shlep it around South America for the next six months. I already have one all-purpose tool. 

Tuesday, September 04, 2012

Harvesting coffee




I arrived in Simonesia at the tail end of the coffee harvest. My timing couldn't have been better.

During the middle of the harvest season, farmers are known to start working as early as 4:00 a.m. and work all day into the night plucking beans off the plant. They spend all day maneuvering on the steep, often slippery, slopes that the coffee is planted on, which can be made even more harrowing by the early morning or late-evening darkness.

Luckily, the family that I was staying with did not start working at such hours. In fact, I was typically the first one out of bed in the morning. After a good breakfast of their own coffee and corn bread, we headed out to the fields.

The equipment used to harvest the beans will vary, depending on the area's climate.  One area that I visited uses a gas-powered coffee harvester that is fashioned out of a weed-whacker. Instead of a spinning blade, they use a rake attachment. They place the tool in the branches and rake out the beans. This tool is great for harvesting all the beans on a plant at once.

The first farm I stayed at to harvest coffee is in a slightly colder and more humid climate. The beans took longer to ripen and did not do so uniformly. You might find that half of the beans on the plant are red or yellow (ready to harvest), while the rest of them were still green. These kinds of plants must be harvested manually. Luckily there have been some technological breakthroughs in manual coffee harvesting in the last few years that make it a much more pleasant experience. (Always pick the beans pulling away from the plant so the same bud will be able to produce next year)



To harvest the beans, you place tarp on the grown below the trees you are going to harvest. Then you pluck the beans, and they fall onto the tarp. Once you have finished harvesting the plants under the tarp, you move the tarp along the row of coffee plants to the next ones you are going to harvest.


At the end of the row, you separate out the sticks and leaves that also fell onto the tarp and put the fresh beans into a sack. If dry, the beans can stay in the sack in the field for three or four hours before they begin to lose quality.  (This is probably why they have a coffee break every few hours)





When you have accumulated enough sacks, you will carry them over to a drying area, where they will sit in the sun for about 11 days. There are also machines that dry coffee beans in less than two days, if you are in a rush.

At that point, the beans leave the farm. They are put into sacks to be taken to a de-pulping place and/or sold.

Monday, September 03, 2012

"Coffee Country" explained


In my previous post, I explained that I was heading to "Coffee Country" but I didn't really explain "Coffee Country" very well.

When the average American thinks of coffee, they probably think of Colombia and the image of Juan Valdez with his trusty steed.

I'm here to break the hard truth to you.

First, Juan Valdez was a fictional character created by the National Federation of Coffee Growers of Colombia. Second, Brazil produces five times as much coffee as Colombia.  It grows more coffee than the rest of the Americas combined.

Brazil produces 32 percent of the world's coffee. The second-leading producer, Vietnam, produces 13 %. 

The state of Brazil where I was working, Minas Gerais, grows 50 % of country's coffee.  The state is about the size of France and has a few main coffee-growing regions. The eastern part of the state, where I was, rises and falls with world coffee prices.

Coffee accounted for over 98 percent of the crops planted in the area where I was and 97 % of the GDP. 

The NGO that I was working with has been working for many years in agroecology and diversification projects in the area. They recently had an intern from Italy who was researching whether it was more economically viable to do agroecology or to plant coffee in the convention way with pesticides.

He is still putting the finishing touches on his paper but the gist of his conclusion was that it makes more economic sense to diversify your crops and produce agroecologically. The farmer might produce less coffee, but he/she will save by not having to by costly inputs and will gain by the sale of the other products. It was obviously more complex than the brief summary I just wrote, but that was the general idea of his work. He interviewed and surveyed several farmers to find out about their production levels in the last few years and showed that in relation to the historical price of coffee.

In many ways, you could describe the monoculture of coffee production where I was in Brazil to the monoculture of banana production in Arenillas. The biggest difference between the two, I feel, is that the small coffee producer in Brazil has access to export markets, whereas the small-scale banana farmer in Ecuador cannot access bigger markets and is forces to sell to local markets or work as a day laborer for the big banana companies. 

Sunday, September 02, 2012

Off to coffee country



After two weeks with my family in Brumadinho, I was ready to move on.

I loved them and the time I spent with them. I had learned so much from them, but I was ready for my next adventure.

I had kept in touch with the organization that organize the agrobiodiversity workshop that Avery and I went to.  They also work in alternative agriculture technologies with small-scale farmers in the eastern, coffee-growing zone of Minas Gerais state.

I got their phone number on Thursday, called them, and told them that I would be there on Monday.  They said that was cool - at least that's what I think they said. My phone Portuguese is improving, but it's not quite as good as my in-person Portuguese, which still needs improvement.

I had an address, a phone number, and no clue what I would be doing.  With those things and my backpack, I hopped on a bus an early morning bus from Belo Horizonte.

The town where the NGO is based is called Simonesia. You won't find it in any guidebooks. It's seven hours from BH, heading town the Atlantic Coast, in an area with coffee, coffee, coffee, coffee, coffee, and one of the most endangered ecosystems in Brazil - the Mata Atlantica.

I figured that if this place didn't work out, I would just take the bus back to BH and find something else to do. Luckily, this place worked out.

The NGO I worked with in Simonesia is REDE. They have worked for over a decade in the area on projects promoting agroecology. If you feel your Portuguese is good, you can read about their projects here. Otherwise, you're going to have to stay tuned to the upcoming posts on this blog.

When I arrived in Simonesia, I told the staff that I wanted to help in any way that I could. I told them that I liked working in the field but would also be more than happy helping them in the office.

They contacted some of the famers and groups in the area and organized for me to spend a few days with each, learning about and assisting in the projects. I could not be any more thankful for the help they provided.

Over the next couple weeks, I will be posting about my adventures in coffee country.

Saturday, September 01, 2012

"Ya mismo" meets its Brazilian equivalent


I had finished an exhausting day of work on the farm and was famished. All I wanted to do was eat dinner and go to sleep.

I was teaching them to make roasted potatoes for dinner and wanted to know when we would be eating so that we would eat them as fresh as possible. My host dad went to town to sell vegetables and had already been gone 40 minutes.

I asked my host mom when he would be back.

"De aqui a pouco."

I understood this mean "A little while from now." So I waited.

Ten minutes passed. He wasn't back yet.

Twenty minutes passed. He wasn't back yet.

Half hour passed. No sign.

At this point, I went up to my host mom and asked her again. "De aqui a pouco." I asked my host brother if my host mom had any idea when Marcio would be back. He shook his head and laughed.

It was at this moment that I realized "De aqui a pouco" is the Brazilian equivalent of "Ya mismo."

Anyone who has been to Ecuador or read about my adventures in Ecuador will no doubt be familiar with that phrase, which is best translated as "I will happen eventually, probably." It could be five minutes, an hour, a day, a week, or seven months.  (I was once told in June "Ya mismo llega Navidad.")

When I first arrived in Ecuador, I wanted this to mean "soon." After a little while, you learn that what you hope the phrase to mean and what it actually means are drastically different.

Fifteen minutes later, Marcio arrived. I finished cooking dinner, ate it, and immediately crashed on my bed.

Luckily, I had the prior experience of "ya mismo" and only let myself get frustrated with "de aqui a pouco" once. The next day, I was waiting for my host brother to finish digging a well with Marcio to be able to go to town to use Internet.

When I asked when he would be ready to go, the response was "de aqui a pouco." At this point, I knew that I had at least an hour before he would be ready to go.