Discover the ancestral seeds that perpetuate Brazilian biodiversity
Since the beginning of the pandemic, productive sectors of society have suffered from instabilities due to the crisis that has settled around the world. The key, however, lies in biodiversity.
Credits: Flickr ASA Brasil
By Eduarda Nunes / Favela em Pauta – Lupa do Bem
A strong contradiction started to be difficult to ignore: how can Brazil break food export records, while millions of Brazilians have gone back to hunger or are in a situation of food insecurity during the crisis caused by the pandemic?
The answer lies in the institutional promotion of agribusiness to the detriment of family farmers. Even so, family farmers continue to spare no effort to try to reverse the hunger situation.
Within this group, where we find peasants, farmers, groups that take care of agroforestry systems, indigenous peoples and quilombola communities, there are the guardians of creole seeds, who not only discard the use of chemicals in food cultivation but also preserve the biodiversity of the food affected by the expansion of monocultures.
Biodiversity and ancestral seeds
Preserved by guardians through generations, these seeds are preserved not only as foodstuffs free from chemical and human interventions but also as a symbol of ancestral customs of understanding the cycles of nature that accompany them.
Even without institutional support, the rural population and traditional communities continue to work in the trenches in the fight against agribusiness, which goes against the grain of guaranteeing biodiversity.
Institutions such as Articulação Semiárido Brasileiro (ASA Brasil) do the work of articulating farmers and promoting projects such as Sementes do Semiárido, an agrobiodiversity management program, in the proposal to enhance strategies for coexistence with the climate.
“The initiatives, from the point of view of governments, whether state or federal, municipal, there are few initiatives, one here and another there” comments Glória Araújo, executive coordinator of ASA.
Launched in 2015, in partnership with BNDES and the Federal Government, Sementes do Semiárido built 859 seed banks throughout the northeast region and north of Minas Gerais, in addition to supporting those that already existed before the project.
As a result, more than a thousand homes and seed banks – spaces where it is possible to share seeds – received investments from federal resources through this initiative. “Asa has contributed and contributes a lot in the sense of multiplying these seeds in backyards, the varieties of these seeds”, says Glória.
Continuing this work, ASA is currently leading the project Agrobiodiversidade no Semiárido, which takes place in partnership with the Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation (Embrapa).
The objective is to demonstrate the importance of native seeds in the process of reducing climate change in Bahia, Sergipe, Pernambuco, Paraíba and Piauí. In addition to trying to influence public conservation policies and their multiplication.
Food insecurity in the country
Food sovereignty has become increasingly distant in the lives of thousands of Brazilians.
According to the National Survey on Food Insecurity in the Context of the Covid-19 Pandemic in Brazil, carried out by the Brazilian Research Network on Food Sovereignty and Security (Rede PENSSAN), almost 212 million Brazilians lived with food insecurity to some degree for three months before the interviews.
The scenario in rural areas is more worrying than in urban areas, due to the distribution and use of water demanded for the food production and animal husbandry.
As groups affected by food insecurity, families headed by women, the self-declared black and brown population, and families that had at least one unemployed person were highlighted. In terms of regions, the highlights were north and northeast.
In this context, family farming is a key part of the domestic food supply. However, “there is no credit policy that promotes agroecology because you don’t do agroecology if you don’t work in harmony with nature”, says Glória, referring to agribusiness practices that go against the foundations of family farming and that have governmental attention to be increasingly put into practice.
