Brazil | Receding

Deforestation had once been national policy, but farmers in the Amazon are now being asked to undo the damage

01 May 2012
In the jungle of Canarana, Santino Sena collects seeds of native Amazonian forest plants, sold to farmers for reforestation.
LORENZO MORALES FOR THE CARAVAN
In the jungle of Canarana, Santino Sena collects seeds of native Amazonian forest plants, sold to farmers for reforestation.
LORENZO MORALES FOR THE CARAVAN

LOOK, THIS IS THE PIT OF JATOBÁ and this is of guanandi,” said Santino Sena, a man with gnarled hands collecting native seeds that had floated to the surface in a swamp in the jungle of Canarana, a municipality of Mato Grosso in west central Brazil.

Sena, who once made a living chopping down trees, is one of 300 workers in the area paid to collect seeds of native Amazonian forest plants for reforestation. The municipality supports a nursery and brokers the sales to farmers who buy the seeds. It’s a growing market: between 2007 and 2010 the sale of forest seeds for reforestation in Brazil quadrupled.

“Before, I didn’t think twice—and now it hurts if I cut a tree,” said Sena. He owns a house, a small Fiat and a motorbike that he paid for in part with seeds. In a year, he can earn up to R$10,000 ($6,000). The seed market is now moving onto the Internet. And it’s just one arm of recent reforestation efforts in Brazil, a country that for many years had the highest rate of deforestation in the world.

Lorenzo Morales  is a freelance journalist based in Colombia. He is a Pulitzer Center grantee and teaches journalism at the Universidad de los Andes in Bogotá.

Keywords: Lorenzo Morales Deforestation Brazil farmers
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