Aroldo Mendes Barbosa’s little house in the Rancharia agrarian reform settlement project, 35 km from Arinos (MG), has a wall covered by a drawing of a large blue car, in children’s lines. His son João Paulo Pereira Mendes, 23, laughs when he confesses that it’s his work.
João Paulo now lives in the city, after graduating in agronomy at the IFNMG (Federal Institute of the North of Minas Gerais), where he also attended high school. Only João Vítor, 16, his only brother, lives with his father.
The 43-hectare area, less than 10% of which was cleared by clearing the savanna, has half a hectare where the bright green of large leaves near the ground predominates. There are hundreds of saffron plants, an intense yellow root, related to ginger, which is the popular spice in the interior of Brazil.
Saffron sprouts among many trees, acerola, banana, guava, papaya, baru, jabuticaba, seriguela, araçá, guariroba (bitter palm) and pitanga. This consortium of tree, fruit and creeping species makes up what is called the agroforestry system, better known by the abbreviation SAF.
The concept is to obtain maximum income from small areas of cultivation, so as to avoid clearing larger areas of natural vegetation for planting traditional crops such as beans, rice and corn — or, even larger, for pasture.
Aroldo sold the last head of cattle after being included in the Copabase Ecoforte Project (Regional Cooperative of Family Agriculture and Extractivism), whose headquarters are on the IFNMG campus. Like him, another thousand families received training in agroecology, and 53 production units obtained resources to implement a SAF.
In the case of Aroldo, the investment was around R$8,000, including seedlings and material to implement irrigation. The family provided land and labor, and agronomist João Paulo also got a job as a technician at Copabase, where he earns R$1,400 a month.
In a year, from July 2020 to July 2021, the trio harvested 1,250 kg of saffron roots. After being sliced, dried and ground in a mill, 150 kg of the resulting powder were sold for R$50 a kilo, an income of R$7,500.
From fruit trees, the income obtained is even better. They even harvest, in half a hectare, seven tons of guava and three of acerola, the sale of which would return R$ 14,500 — in addition to what they get by selling sour coconuts collected from the low-lying palm trees that swarm in the preserved forest.
However, given the difficulties in selling the fruits imposed by the pandemic, with the suspension of classes and lunches in public schools that absorb the production of pulp, the result dropped to R$ 5,000 in 2021.
Copabase was founded in 2008. Its area of operation is the northwest of Minas Gerais, in the micro-region Urucuia Grande Sertão, close to the Grande Sertão Veredas National Park.
One of its trump cards, in addition to the Ecoforte program, is the organization of the production, processing and commercialization chain of baru, Brazil nuts with growing national and international demand.
After 13 years, the cooperative took a leap in 2021 with entry into sales channels such as Central do Cerrado and Mercado Livre. It also started to export baru to the United States.
Another milestone this year was the Ticca certification (Indigenous Territories and Areas Protected by Local Communities) for communities that make up the cooperative. International recognition will be useful to open doors in markets that value fair trade and socially and environmentally sustainable practices.
Journalists Lalo de Almeida and Marcelo Leite traveled at the invitation of the IEB (InstituEducation International of Brazil ) and CEPF (Partnership Fund for Critical Ecosystems).
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