Castanheira: a giant forest



You've probably tasted the Brazil-nut, known as brown-nut.

This food goes a long way to arrive at the table and not just the food that comes from Pará, but also from other regions that make up the Amazon.

His collection is performed by extractive living inside the forests and along the rivers. To collect the fruits or nuts these hedgehogs "working forest" traverse miles of trails in the forests during the rainy season in the Amazon. Spend days and days walking to collect chestnuts hedgehogs falling from one of the largest trees in the Amazon rainforest. The chestnut comes to live 500 years and can reach up to 50 meters, which corresponds to the height of a building of 16 floors. Imagine the speed and impact when the hedgehog falls?

That almond we eat is the seed of the horse chestnut which is very well protected by a hard shell wrapped, like wood - one that graces the Christmas table, remember? And to further protect, after all they are almost 50 meters drop, this seed is inside the hedgehog chestnut, a kind of coconut that stores various nuts in shell (the seeds), shaped buds.

The agouti is the main dispersers of this species, since it is one of the few animals that can gnaw hedgehog, bark and finally eat a Brazil-nut. How many nuts are in the same hedgehog, agouti buries some to eat later, and usually does not return to pick up. With this win the forest, which will have a very good seed planted in the soil and will eventually be more a chestnut tree sprouted.

Already the main pollinator of chestnut is the bee mangavá (or bumblebee). A very large bee that resembles a beetle, and one that can have the strength to get inside the flower nut and pollinate it.

But the great protagonist of this story are the gatherers, men and women living in the forest and there earn their livelihood. They collect hedgehogs with a wooden instrument called hand ounce, to avoid having to bend over to pick up the fruit on the ground. The hedgehogs are huddled close to the nut and after traversing several trails in the forest, they come back to break the hedgehogs with machete - the machete. Almonds wrapped in bark will then call for a basket pannier, the extractive carries like a backpack.

The extractive work does not end there, he needs to put the nuts to dry in the shade and fresh air and the mountains revolver daily. This step is critical to avoid contamination by fungi. The extractive sells nuts in cans (are reused paint cans, buckets) to the processing plants, where the nuts are broken almonds and set aside. Once packed, they are sent to supermarkets and finally can be sampled and ensure the income of hundreds of the Amazon Forest.

Source: http://ccw.sct.embrapa.br/?pg=bloguinho_default&codigo=135