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Systematizing Experiences and Professional Training for the Support of Fruit Picker Women and Sustainable Extractivism in the North and Northeast of Brazil

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After eight years of intervention among the mangaba fruit picker women, an inter-institutional and inter-disciplinary team in the northeast and north of Brazil has mapped extractivist areas, has written about the importance of its practices to the conservation of biodiversity and culture, has supported the foundation of the Mangaba Fruit Picker Women Movement (MCM), has trained fruit picker women and has systematized essential knowledge to the comprehension of their life styles. In addition, it has elaborated with them letters to institutions, participation solicitation of their representation in different foruns (CNPCT - National Commission of Sustainable Development of Traditional Peoples and Communities) and documents for different interlocutors regarding arguments focused in the need to stpp plant cutting, among which is Sergipe's Federal Public Ministry. At last, it provided advisory services to the process of elaboration of the State of Sergipe's Law Project #51. More recently, before the expropriation threats that the mangaba pickers have been facing with the persistence of plant cuttings and the expansion of tourist infra-structure, new types of alternatives have been demanded, among which the access to lands in locations with native plants and collective access to areas of secular common use. In any of the cases, the continuation of the condition of fruit pickers, the conservation of native plants in areas of common use and private ones, and the fruit aggregation of value are the most pressing demands and, as such, they represent a challenge to the conventional services of technical assistance and extension historically marked by the assistance to a public which practices agriculture. In Brazil, only recently, a group of initiatives valorizes the action of local groups with the natural resources in a given territory (extractivism) and the new ways of doing agriculture (agroecology, and organic agriculture, etc.) In this sense, it's important to train professionals to act along with extractivist populations in the valorization of ethnical perspective, the knowledge profitability, the conservation of environmental and cultural resources and the conservation of bio-diversity. In this context, this project aims to train professionals to act with and for the mangaba fruit pickers regarding: i) performance of extractivist activities with larger fruit volume and quality, parallel to the plant conservation, maintaining areas of great environmental interest protected; ii) aggregation of value of the fruit with the production of candies, cookies, chocolate, fruit pulp and licors; iii) commercialization of extrativist products (PAA - Federal Government's Program of Acquisition of Foods and local and regional market); and iv) participation in the spaces of dialog and decision regarding initiatives of interest in the hopes of attaining recognition as an ethnical group, and the access guarantee to the resources that provide their work and life and the conservation of biodiversity. The importance of this initiative justifies itself by the fact that current fruit pickers constitute a recognized and demmanded segment of opinion on actions which concern them nationally.

Ecosystem: Atlantic Forest

Status: Completed Start date: Tue Mar 01 00:00:00 GMT-03:00 2011 Conclusion date: Fri Feb 28 00:00:00 GMT-03:00 2014

Head Unit: Embrapa Eastern Amazon

Project leader: Dalva Maria da Mota

Contact: dalva.mota@embrapa.br