The Great Amazonian Pantry: How Eating the Products of the Rainforest Could Save the Earth

This Article was originally published on the HuffingtonPost.com website. There is a type of river snail — a churo — in the Peruvian Amazon, large and meaty, that is especially delicious when slow-braised and served in the shell with a bright sauce of golden tapioca pearls. Indigenous people harvest the giant snail when the forest is flooded and transformed into an otherworldly realm where, because of the rising water level, fish swim among the majestic kapok tree and through the umbrella-like branches of the cecropia tree. […]

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Innovating Brazil nuts: a business with roots in the rainforest

This Article was originally published on news.mongabay.com. Sofía Rubio was eight years old when she decided she wanted to be a biologist. “I would skip school to go to the woods with my father or mother,” who did research in what is now the Tambopata National Reserve in the southeastern Peruvian Amazon, she says. Today, dressed in a white lab coat, her ponytail caught up under a green hair net, Rubio hovers over a table, weighing Brazil nuts. But she’s not cloning them […]

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Feast in the Forest: Shiwi and its Brazil Nuts

I was in the Amazon rainforest of Peru to see how Brazil nuts make the long journey from forest to nut mix. I wasn’t expecting a gourmet treat, but they tend to show up in unexpected places. Harvesting Brazil nuts is hard manual work, in remote areas, deep in the jungle. Harvesters spend long weeks in the forest gathering the cannonball-like fruit from the forest floor, shelling them on site and then hauling them in heavy loads miles through the forest. The harvest is intimately […]

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Cutting Out the Middleman: Not always the best strategy?

The gap between what farmers and forest dwellers receive for their products and what these are ultimately sold for in rich country markets is often staggering. Adding more value to sustainable natural products and selling them more directly are often seen as options for closing this gap to help producers keep a bigger share of the final product’s value. And while there are some great examples of capturing value this way, the much reviled ‘middlemen’ often play crucial […]

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Gustu: From farm (and forest and river) to table in Bolivia

“They are so bright…so many colors…so much…so different…diverse” Elizabeth Abel of the cutting-edge restaurant Gustu, struggles for the right words as she answers my question about Amazon products, her hesitancy reflecting the flood of images that came to mind as soon as I mentioned the word “Amazon.” But her point is clear: it is a vast multicolor world of natural wealth. “Traditional uses…” she adds, “are part of the magic […]

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Putting the spotlight on producers at Ecuador’s Latitud Cero

“We need to codify products, see who produces them, where, how…and connect them more effectively. We must change lives through gastronomy.” Gaston Acurio at Latitud Cero. Ecuador’s diverse cuisine had its chance to shine last week at the Latitud Cero Ecuador Cultura Gourmet festival in that country’s highland capital, Quito. Often overshadowed by Peru, its more gastronomically prominent neighbor to the south, Ecuador is coming into its own with a cuisine that integrates […]

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Rescuing Ancient Superfoods – Changing lives in the process

Ojoche, Ojite, Ojushte, Ujushte, Capomo, Manchinga, Pisba waihka, Huje, Mojo, Ax, Ramon Nut, Breadnut… a partial list of many names for the same seed. Where I live, Ecuador, it’s called Sande but I had no idea it existed until I heard about the Maya Nut Institute a couple of months ago. Since 2001 Maya Nut Institute has improved livelihoods by empowering women and supporting nutritional health through this amazing seed, which they named “Maya Nut.” Maya Nut Institute […]

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