2024-05-09 18:45:00
A work that bears fruit in the literal and figurative senses. This is the result achieved by the Vale do Ribeira Seed Network, which offers seeds for the restoration of degraded areas of the Atlantic Forest and generates income for quilombola communities in the São Paulo municipalities of Iporanga and Eldorado.
The Network was created in 2017 from the meeting of quilombolas in the region who began collecting seeds of native species from their territories to make available to the reforestation market. The work was so successful that, in 2023, the first quilombola cooperative of seed collectors was formalized. And, since then, the extractive group has only grown.
This was what happened during the Network’s annual meeting, on May 6th and 7th, when new members were incorporated into the Vale do Ribeira Seed Network Cooperative, which today has 52 members. Over the two days, in assembly, the collectors still deliberated about the values charged on the seeds; presented their statute, with the functions and tasks of each participant and shared the 2023 balance sheet, with sales and collection numbers.
Collectors and supporters of the Vale do Ribeira Seed Network Cooperative gather at the annual meeting, where they celebrate the balance of 2023 and outline work strategies for 2024 | Taynara Borges/ISA
In total, the group sold R$140,000 last year, resulting from the sale of more than a ton of native seeds from the Atlantic Forest, which reforested 35 hectares of the degraded biome using a variety of 81 species such as Jaracatiá, Araçá, Tapixingui , Guapiruvu and Mamica-de-Porca.
“I want to be a member because I believe in the work being developed by the Seed Network Cooperative. I don’t want to be just another one. I want to join in this forest restoration work, because, for me, this is also a struggle”, declared the new member, Amarildo Meiri de França, collector of Quilombo São Pedro.
The Seed Network works with planting from Muvuca: direct sowing made with a mixture of different species strategically chosen for the area to be restored | Andressa Cabral Botelho/ISA
The Seed Network is an example of how the economy of socio-biodiversity is carried out in practice: the sustainable use of biodiversity in activities that generate income for traditional people and communities, based on a respectful relationship between these people and nature, which results in preserving the environment, ranging from mitigating the critical effects resulting from climate change to ensuring food security, that is, improving the quality of life of those who historically live in and are guardians of the standing forest.
Thinking about this entire chain, the collector and secretary of the Rede Cooperative, Zélia Morato, from Quilombo André Lopes, provokes: “Who says that money doesn’t grow on trees? Money grows in standing trees, yes! Here is the example of that. We don’t knock it down. We preserve the trees and, therefore, we will always have seeds to collect”.
“At first I thought this was impossible. I even thought it was a joke. But I soon understood the size of this work. And that’s why I’m here. I’m here to reforest, to take trees to where there aren’t any, to where they are degraded. And since then, in addition to helping new forests grow, my family has also had a new source of income. Everyone wins”, she declares that she is one of the first collectors and organizers of the Network.
Did you know that Circular Economy, Bioeconomy, Agroecology, and Agroforestry, Regenerative Economy and Bioconstruction have been practiced by Traditional Peoples and Communities for centuries?! And that they are the basis of the Sociobiodiversity Economy?! Understand the path pointed out by indigenous people, quilombolas, riverside communities and many other communities as the possible possibility of a future without water scarcity, deforestation and destruction, reducing the devastating impacts of the climate emergency. Watch here!
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