Day 8: Notes
I’m too tired to organize my thoughts so please excuse the bullet points:
I have been so impressed by how cosmopolitan Brazil is — turns out i was just in the wrong places. The nature of life in the campo is very familiar to me from my field work in Ecuador. When B, one of my coworkers, was whizzing in and out of traffic and explaining over Santana’s “Smooth” the difference between two pastures that looked exactly the same to me, all while switching between Spanish, English, and Portuguese, I decided to embrace the chaos of it all.
The Sesame Street word of the day is scrungly. Scrungly cows, scrungly dogs, some of the scrungliest chickens I’ve ever seen. A very cute but very scrungly little kitten. Love it.
I ate fresh acai today and it was awesome. Totally different taste than the smoothie stuff you get in the states. I added a little honey and some tapioca as was recommended and I want to eat it all the time. I am so full of vitamins I feel like Dr. Manhattan. I’m going to try to bring some acai back with me as well as some cacao!
I am kind of shocked by the amount of empty converted land here. I have yet to see intact primary forest. In between pasture and agricultural land there is a lot of secondary growth, but you can tell because every once in a while you’ll see a tree that is two to three times as tall as the rest of them and recognize the scale of what has been lost here. A lot of the land has been converted for ease of ranching — it’s much harder to manage pasture over time in a responsible way than it is to just clear more land when the pasture becomes unusable. Also, lots of land has been cleared and is being bought and sold by big ag or land spectulators.
Continuing to have very complicated feelings about capitalism. I can’t decide whether or not I really believe that it’s worth it to be pragmatic and solutions-oriented or if we (as environmentalists not necessarily as TNC employees) are totally getting taken for a ride by big ag. Ultimately they are the ones with the power to solve these problems and they are choosing not to in pursuit of the profit motive. That’s true of everyone up and down the value chain, but at the very least most producers need the money to feed their families, not buy a fifth boat. At least, most of them do — I learned today that a lot of people who raise cattle are “cattle people” as they’re called, and not ranchers, because cattle is a side hustle on top of something else they do for extra money. I taught my coworkers the term “side hustle” today to describe this. Anyway. Weird how money is both the problem and the solution in literally all these scenarios.
The leftist movement in the United States needs to get on the level of what’s happening in Brazil. We passed two encampments on our way here from a group called MST, which is a landless worker’s movement that occupies agricultural land. Apparently they are the biggest producer of rice in South America — all on occupied land from big ag! Really incredible to see. Between that and the farmer’s collective we visited today, I am really impressed with the different types of solutions and challenges to the hegemony that I am seeing.
The farmer’s association was very cool. Lots of language I can get behind about how producers can generate power by banding together and how education on proper farm management is the key to success. Of course their goals are not for improved sustainability but for better price, but I’ll take it.
Beef supply chain continues to be extremely complicated but I feel I’m getting it better now but also it’s really messed up.
I cannot for the life of me tell the difference between degraded and not degraded pasture so I’m going to have to take everyone else’s word for it.
Some phrases of the day: “Satanaries” - when someone who is an Aries is really difficult. It’s awesome. Brazilians are really into astrology. Also “sustainable cattle influencer” which is a great combination of words.
Mining! I forgot about mining! That is also happening here.
Continuing to love my coworkers. Brazilians are so damn funny all the time, which is impressive to me since I know firsthand how hard it is to be funny in a non-native language. Best moment of today: the farmer who’s land we visited was very deaf, and being very deaf didn’t seem to realize I didn’t speak Portuguese. So he was loudly explaining something to me about cocoa farming in Portuguese while I was smiling nervously and nodding, and one of my coworkers D came over and deadpanned “wow, this is a great conversation.”
B is on to my gringa antics. He told me not to pet the animals at the farm, and within ten minutes of showing up I was trying not to do that very thing. They had a kitten, I couldn’t help it!
I witnessed frog violence! Jk, everything was fine, but a frog the size of a hubcap was chased away with a rake and I was worried something would happen to him. :(
I literally cannot believe I still have a week left of travel but I’m trying not to worry about it too much and just take it a day at a time.
Is it even worth it to shower tonight if tomorrow I’m going to get gross and sweaty again?
Remember when I promised to take pictures? Well, I’m using my phone to record hours of conversation to transcribe and translate, plus its too hot, so I lied. Sorry.
