This Article was originally published by Mater Iniciativa. Recently, Latin America continued its rise to prominence on the global gastronomy scene, with nine restaurants from Mexico, Peru and Brazil joining the ranks of the world’s Top 50. The success of these leading chefs is a credit to their creativity and hard work and draws – as they frequently acknowledge – on the rich biology and diverse cultural traditions of their countries. […]
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 […]
Read More… from Innovating Brazil nuts: a business with roots in the rainforest
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 […]
Read More… from Feast in the Forest: Shiwi and its Brazil Nuts
World famous as a crucible of evolution and for their remarkable flora and fauna, the Galapagos Islands are both fascinating and fragile. But amidst the giant tortoises, diving iguanas and blue-footed boobies, a handful of farmers are also trying to put these islands on the map as a source of exceptional coffee. […]
