The home of Marliane das Chagas Soares, in the interior Amazonian community of Juruti, in Para, Brazil, seldom lacks tasty treats. Several types of cakes, cookies and desserts frequently grace the family table.

They are all delicious, but they are all made from the same main ingredient: cassava, also known as manioc or yucca. It has, for some time, been the only crop grown in this area. That makes for a less-than-nutritious diet.

Recently, that has begun to change. With help from WRI Brazil, Soares’ household, along with 21 other families in Juruti, shifted their farm away from cassava-only cultivation towards a system known as agroforestry. Agroforestry—which involves integrating trees and shrubs into farming systems—can diversify farmers’ crops by adding fruit trees and other edible plants on fields.

在曾经受到砍伐和爆炸的区域,农林业具有恢复这些森林领域提高生产率的额外好处。现在,倡导者希望在朱洛蒂(Juruti)发生的事情可以作为巴西全面森林修复的典范,该模型的目标是到2030年恢复1200万公顷(近3000万英亩)的森林。

燃烧太快

由于铝土矿开采,在过去十年中,在亚马逊河河岸的一个约50,000个社区。但是,人口和经济增长尚未刺激大量农村发展。它是一个贫穷的区域,仅由粗糙的土路服务,与下水道和卫生设施等现代资源分开。

Most of the rural population uses fire to clear land for agriculture, a technique they call coivara; in English, it is known as slash-and-burn.

请注意,库瓦拉(Coivara)燃烧的朱拉蒂(Juruti)附近这片土地上的方斑块。Joana Oliveira/Wri Brasil
请注意,库瓦拉(Coivara)燃烧的朱拉蒂(Juruti)附近这片土地上的方斑块。Joana Oliveira/Wri Brasil

A cleared area will produce cassava for two or three years. After that it is abandoned, and the farmer moves on to a new area.

以前,农民将需要两到三十年才能返回被烧毁的区域,到那时候将康复。如今,由于土地短缺可用于耕种,因此它们在短短两年内返回。连续的燃烧使朱拉蒂的土壤耗尽,使农作物的生产力降低。随着气必威官网是真的吗候变化改变了该地区的降雨动态,大火经常从农作物田传播到原始森林。

以木薯为中心的农业对社区有进一步的弊端。它需要艰难的劳动和长时间。此外,仅依靠木薯(被鱼补充)不能提供足够的饮食营养素。

很明显,朱蒂(Juruti)的农民如果想继续居住在那里,就需要景观改变。但是问题仍然存在:他们如何恢复土地并使土地更有生产力?

生产森林和社会景观

一个可能的答案在于农林业。

Native trees ready for planting. Joana Oliveira/WRI Brasil
Native trees ready for planting. Joana Oliveira/WRI Brasil

在朱洛蒂(Juruti)的农林业将允许农民继续生产木薯或保留牲畜,同时引入本地果树和其他改善土壤质量的植物。(这些本地植物的种子必须从森林中收集到以下。)

这是一个明显的差异。在以前的系统下,农民只会持续两三年才能将他们的途径砍伐到新领域。使用农林业,同一区域可以在30年的周期内生长木薯,水果,坚果和木制品,而无需燃烧森林。

性别关键是散布农林业

一个好的森林修复项目需要了解有关将要恢复的景观的一切。那里有哪种土壤?哪种物种可以生存,哪个物种会繁衍生息?

People are vital too. Communities, corporations, government agencies, and individuals all influence the outcome of a project. Understanding these actors’ needs, motivations, and relations is crucial to a successful project.

WRI approached members of the Juruti community to learn more about the social landscape focused on agroforestry. We initially convened conversations with men and women together. But women let their male partners lead these conversations. In order to represent the input of women in a more balanced manner, researchers split men and women in two different groups, creating an environment where women could share their opinions more comfortably. This approach revealed that women had access only to second-handed information sources on farming and restoration (such as information from neighbors or the church), while men tended to get information in primary sources (such as official, governmental rural assistance).

Women basically did not have the information they needed to implement the roles they held in the transition to agroforestry.

These roles are important. Many farms are led by women, especially when men work away from the farm for wages. Additionally, women are the ones who travel into the Amazon to gather the seeds necessary to plant native species. Juruti is not close to other villages, making this travel dangerous; floods posing a risk that is magnified by the fact that women often do not have access to the Internet, where they might obtain up-to-date meteorological information. Getting this information to women in a different way would be a boon to restoration efforts that hinged on native species.

As the social landscape mapping uncovered, women get their information from very different sources than men, tending towards secondary and word-of-mouth sources such as elders, children and the church. To reach women, restoration advocates need to include more than just the publications men were reading in their outreach efforts.

Production Without Deforestation

Marliane Das Chagas Soares和她的丈夫。Joana Oliveira/Wri Brasil
Marliane Das Chagas Soares和她的丈夫。Joana Oliveira/Wri Brasil
咨询过程的发现帮助弗里·巴西森林团队建立了下一个项目的阶段:21个家庭将参加飞行员农林业项目。选定的家庭中有14个由妇女领导,该团队通过研讨会和其他活动为她们提供了技术支持。Wri Brazil雇用了一家农林业的佩特拉·特拉(Petra Terra),根据每个家庭的需求来建立农林业设计。

有了这一支持,2019年初,Soares的家庭种植了一个根据principles of agroforestry. Where cassava was once the only crop, the demonstration hectare mixes crops and forest. They planted native trees, including paricá, cumaru (also known as tonka) and even rosewood (used in perfumes), as well as fruit trees, such as açaí, cupuaçu — a tropical rainforest tree fruit related to cacao — and banana.

"My goal is to show people how to produce without deforesting. We want to take this work to other farmers," said another project leader, Fatima de Melo Lima, smallholder farmer and the president of the Rural Workers Union in Juruti.

例如,Soares家族希望继续生产木薯,并制作其美味的传统糕点和蛋糕。但是农林业使他们能够多样化他们的产品。谁知道 - 将来,家庭餐桌可能会有Açai,Cupuaçu和Amazon和Cassava旁边的其他各种果实。