Can Slow Food save Brazil's fast-vanishing Cerrado savanna? - Slow Food International slowfood.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from slowfood.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Can ‘Slow Food’ save Brazil’s fast-vanishing Cerrado savanna?
The original version of this article, by Sharon Guynup, appeared on Mongabay.
It’s November in southeast Brazil, and the tall, feathery macaúba palms (
Acrocomia aculeata) are beginning to drop ripe coconuts. By January, the ground is littered with them, as some 67 families that live nearby, outside the town of Jaboticatubas, get to work dragging the trove home.
This coconut serves as the lifeblood for these traditional farming communities in the Cerrado savanna in Minas Gerais state, Brazil. Archaeological sites trace its use back to at least 9,000 B.C.
Every part of the all-purpose coconut is used, from its delicious yellowish flesh to the nut at its core. It’s a favorite kids’ snack, and is used to make a highly nutritious flour, baked into bread and cookies. Livestock eat it too.
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