City food and health in brazil

CITY FOOD AND HEALTH IN BRAZIL

INTRODUCTION

Urban population is increasing around the globe, particularly in developing countries. Nowadays, about half the population of those countries is already urbanized, being the growth of very large settlements remarkable. It’s an accelerating trend, challenging city managers to assist the newcomers with jobs, shelter, social services, and proper environment. That’s why urban cultivation has been rediscovered in developing world cities, in recent years.

In Brazil, eight in ten people already live in cities and towns, and the urbanized extensive areas are running short of resources. The possibility that residents are capable to produce food and improve family nutrition is quite impressive and hopeful. We’ve noticed that in many cities local governments are promoting the intensive growth of vegetables, fruit trees and the raising of micro livestock or poultry on open spaces that are vacant or unsuited for urban development, hence helping to ameliorate the economic and nutritional security of the urbanites, and enhancing the beautification of the urban spaces.

Urban agriculture consists of many diverse activities, quite significant and important to the lives of tens of millions of people throughout the world. It was defined as “an industry that produces, processes and markets food and fuel, largely in response to the daily demand of consumers within a town, city or metropolis, on land and water dispersed throughout the urban and peri-urban area, applying intensive production methods, using and reusing natural resources and urban wastes, to yield a diversity of crops and livestock” (UNDP 1996, p.3).

In many cities control over access to basic inputs, such as capital, labour and land, mean that even middle-income families are often involved in urban agriculture (Drakakis-Smith 1996). In Brazilian cities and towns the most common site for urban agriculture practitioners is the household plot, even though on the urban periphery one can find small-scale farmers, cropping idle open spaces, or even large-scale entrepreneurs, occupying green belt productive areas, typical market gardeners growing fresh produce for close-by urban markets. Yet, basically, urban growers are the ones concerned with rising food prices, the ones who have badly paid jobs; or then, they’re unemployed, they’re old and retired, and they are women and housewives.

Additionally, we should stress that urban agriculture in Brazil is not a transitory or temporary phenomenon. Research developed in two different urban centres showed that more than half of the interviewed cultivated inner city plots for more than 10 years, and more than one third even grew food for more than 20 years. Being the lowest income population the more active urban agriculture practitioners, (around 39% of the Brazilian urban gardeners inquired received less than 250 US dollars per month, and 77% less than 600), primary activities are far from being marginal activities for the sector gives economic opportunities to small entrepreneurs, not only in agricultural production but also in related industries and services.

We know people all over the world rely on nature to treat what ails them. In Brazil, medicinal herbs are the second major occurrence in inner-city plots and household gardens. Many plants have been the subject of extensive scientific studies, while others have badly documented effects. That has not taken away a big group of believers, because these herbs are easily produced in household plots or even small containers, they’re cheap and available. Once people, per tradition or faith, rely on natural remedies, they surely feel better after taking them, whether or not the active substance it’s supposed to contain had any effect.

Urban ecosystem improvement is one of the benefits of these primary activities in Brazil, not only because more than half the urban gardeners use polluting waste as a production input, but also because urban agriculture spaces are oxygen and genetic reserves. Therefore, urban farming creates green spaces in the city and helps the good maintenance of urban open spaces, improving life quality and generating better environmental standards.

RESEARCH METHODS

This paper is based on field research undertook in the biggest Amazonian city, Belém (population 1,241,824 inhabitants, in the 1991 Census), the capital of Northern Pará state, in March and between June and September 1998, together with another survey from Presidente Prudente, a medium sized town (pop: 165,484), located in the interior of S. Paulo state, dating from November and December 1999.

The methodology we drew is quite similar to the one proposed by different researchers on the subject (UNDP 1996; Vennetier 1961; Van den Berg et al 1998) involving extensive field visits to the urban areas of study, participant observation of local residents primary activities, various meetings with government and municipal agents, especially prepared sessions with university local experts on agriculture, rural sociology, geography, botanic, agronomy and urban planning, gatherings with non-governmental organizations dealing with urban poverty, to finalize with semi-structured and structured interviews.

The insights of all the observations, meetings and semi-structured interviews conducted in Belém were the basis for developing themes around which subsequent inquiries were structured. Once we noticed, in the following field research undertook in Presidente Prudente, that data gathered corroborated much information taken from Amazonia, we used the same sampling techniques and the same questionnaire.

Experience from the first research, exploratory on this issue, due to the inexistence of descriptive reports on food production in other Brazilian cities, turned less time consuming the second mission to São Paulo state. Together with three university students, we interviewed 555 families of urban agriculture practitioners, randomly dispersed through the urban tissue in Belém. A similar procedure was met in Presidente Prudente, a much smaller urban centre, were in collaboration with two graduate university students we inquired 280 family informants.

Using a qualitative rather than a quantitative approach, the purpose of the meetings with specialists, NGOs and public officials was to get a picture of the economic, political and social status quo of vegetable production, animal husbandry and street commerce of uncooked or cooked foods. The primary aim of semi-structured interviews was to capture deeper insights into how urban residents perceived urban cultivation.

Information obtained in the field was supplemented with material from subject-related studies on local and national economy, health habits and practises, from scientific papers and publications. A considerable amount of herbal remedies were inventoried and many plant species were collected, then identified by local botanists and finally shipped back to Portugal. Culinary habits and regional food tastes were also tested and systematically studied.

The research hypothesis was that household plots constitute a significant origin of city food production in developing countries. Household plots are defined as front- and backyards used as gardens to grow small ornamental bushes, flowers, fruit trees, spices, vegetables, medicinal plants, including also fish ponds, chicken coops and other micro-livestock annexes.

In the next few pages we will report more extensively the field research conducted in the two Brazilian cities above mentioned, using first-hand sources as well as written sources from other research approaches, together with statistical data analysis from State and federal census data.

URBAN FARMING IN BRAZIL

The relatively high natural growth rate, the expanding migration rate, increasingly originated in the rural interior areas, where living standards are quite unattractive as compared to the urban mythic potential, tend to push people to the cities. Meanwhile, there’s a growing demand for urban land, small plots where to build shacks and tiny little houses, that perpetuate the pattern and traditional modes of living from the rural realm, transforming peripheral neighbourhoods in Brazil in function compatible spaces, dominated by the juxtaposition of built up areas and agriculture open spaces, farmed by low-income families.

So urban growth and agriculture are conveniently intertwined in the biggest South American country, even though there has not been much scientific work on the subject. That’s why we mainly focused our research attention in intra-urban farmed spaces, so far depreciated by statistics and censuses, while relying on these to characterize the green belt.

Urban agriculture in Brazil is labour intensive and occurs in small plots that start right next to the city heart (the CBD) and tend to widen toward the periphery. Moreover, the more peripheral is the neighbourhood, the more scattered is residential development usually. In Belém, as in Presidente Prudente, we noticed that idle land tended to be more abundant in the newly developed settlements, ideal spaces to grow food crops as cassava, corn, sweet potato and a wide variety of beans, which constitute an important part of daily diet in the country in analysis.

We found three distinctive types of urban cultivation: 1. Household gardens or home gardens; 2. Urban shifting farms; 3. Peri-urban market farms. This typology is quite similar to the one described by other authors in Africa (van den Berg at al. 1998), difference residing in the proportion of urban agriculture practitioners who crop those spaces from country to country and from community to community.

In the case of the first group of spaces, we accounted for more than 87% urban residents growing crops and raising animals in their own front- or backyards, usually family owned and attached to their home. The family member who more often tends the garden is mainly a female - the mother, a grant-mother, a grown up daughter or a maid - even though all family cooperates dividing the tasks and consuming the production.

Urban shifting farms are normally cared by lower or low-middle-income class individuals, retired, underemployed or unemployed (11.4% of the urban growers in Belém), more commonly male, that farm idle land existent inside the city or around peripheral neighbourhoods, which have still not been taken over by urban development.

Sometimes the land is illegally occupied, for corrupt local government officials often ignore ownership rights or then effective settlement is stimulated in badly registered or hardly controlled areas, like the ones dominant in Northern and Western states. Twenty percent of total families surveyed in the Amazonian city of Belém were squatters, and only 2.5% in Presidente Prudente, as public control of land ownership is tighter in S. Paulo South-Eastern state. About 13.2% of the families we surveyed in this last town had rented the plots they farmed, and 17.5% of the households had borrowed the land from a friend or a relative (only 6% in Belém). Nevertheless we believe actual figures of squatters that practise urban agriculture to be much higher in many other cities, for the tendency to farm all possible urban open spaces, even vacant land under heavy power lines, plots existent along routes and railways is increasing as welfare decreases.

As to peri-urban market gardens they could either be taken by middle-class and high-middle class landowners, that grow food for hobby or profit, is the last example through contract workers, male dominant. But there are also lower-middle class individuals again, with a rural past and know how, who specialize on commercial horticulture crops, highly labour-intensive, irrigated, sometimes even chemically fertilized, developed on land they own, rent or “invade”, and explored for demand on the close-by markets as an income-generating activity. To this small group of resourceful and persistent males belong the full-time growers we interviewed, about 2.5% in Presidente Prudente and 1.1% in Belém.

Therefore, agriculture is far from being merely a temporary business in Brazil. More than half the cultivated area was in hands of people who had been living and caring household gardens or inner city vacant plots for more than 10 years, as we mentioned before. About 41.4% of the surveyed families in Belém were farming for more than 20 years and 35.7% in Presidente Prudente. Even those who had borrowed plots to farm, usually for profit as we also remarked, were very active, vigilant and persistent cultivators, with an enviable love to the land one usually only experiences in rural realms, while displaying environmentally friendly techniques.

Farmers in vacant intra-urban lots and peri-urban land plan cropping depending on market demand, and produce vegetables several times a year in order to increase the income. The home gardeners, on the contrary, select a mix of fruits, vegetables, spices and animals season by season, based on the nutritional needs of the family. Being the last far more numerous in Brazil, it explains front- and backyard diversity of species, transforming the well managed urban plots on genetic reserves, giving sustainability to cities through waste recycling, and food security to their residents.

In fact, the abundant lower economic circuit or informal modes of life reflect rising unemployment (18.6% in São Paulo metropolitan area, in November 1999), and low wages dominant all over the country, where more than half the population lives under the poverty line. Consequently, in urban areas fruit plants like Euterpe oleracea (açaí palm), the most abundant species found in Belém (39.8% of the cultivated spaces visited), constitute a nutritional household reserve, for their fruits are highly appreciated sources of vitamins, juices being more nutritious than milk, hence being taken on a daily basis as diet supplements (Madaleno 2000).

Not endemic, but yet tropical and quite nutritious too, are the Persea Americana (avocado), dominant in Manaus, (capital of Amazonas state), because it requires high humidity, and the Asian Mangifera indica (mango), surprisingly more important in Presidente Prudente than in Belém, supposedly the “mango city of Brazil”. The last one is a species with low water requirements but high temperature preferences (Wade 1986). Many other fruits are abundant in both surveyed cities, like guava, rose-apple, papaya, banana, passion fruit (found in 17 spaces in Belém and 8 in Prudente), pomegranate (24 spaces in Prudente), coconut, limes, lemons, tangerines and several types of oranges (see table 1).

It’s quite interesting to notice that most of these fruits come from selected tropical plants with small space requirements. That’s the case with banana (3 x 2 metres), papaya (4 x 2.5 m), guava (6 x 5 m), lime (7 x 7 m) and pomegranate (2 x 2). Pomegranates are particularly popular bushes or small trees in Presidente Prudente´s middle and high-middle-class household gardens (8.6% of UA spaces), because the fruit is edible as food and the leaves are boiled into a brew for it’s anti-inflammatory powers, with proven action for tonsils.

Additionally, most of the fruit and nut trees we found in front and backyards took only few months to harvest: 4-6 months the papayas; 13-15 months the bananas; 20 months the cashew; 24 the passion plants; 36 the guavas; 48 the mango trees. The last one usually gives two crops a year, and so do avocado plants, while papayas, coconut palms, açaí, limes, banana plants, guavas and passions have fruits year round (Wade 1986).

We would like to emphasise that one single avocado contains about 980 calories, corresponding to nearly half our daily nutritional need, while only half medium coconut supplies 1900 calories and contains the necessary daily allowance of B1 vitamin. About 100 grammas of cashew nuts a day supply enough proteins to an adult human being and provide the necessary B3 vitamin. As to mangoes, they are the richest tropical fruits in vitamin A; the papayas are one of the best digestives in nature; guavas are excellent sources of vitamin C, as well as lemons, oranges, mangoes, papayas and passion fruits, being Acerola cherry (Malpighia punicifolia) the most recommended of them all (Manica 1997; Wade 1986). This last plant species was found in 19.1% of the spaces we visited in Belém and 21.4% in Presidente Prudente. Bananas, oranges, lemons and pomegranates are also rich in B complex vitamins, and the first one in E vitamin too.

Small, even tiny, vegetable gardens are also quite common, normally irrigated on a daily basis (85.4% of spaces visited), sometimes with milk and water mixtures, or waste water from vegetable and meat washing procedures, and fertilized with organic compounds, which in our study covered more than half the spaces visited. Fertilizers were namely açaí seeds and bird manure in Belém, corn wastes, tree leaves and family meals garbage, chicken or ox manure, in São Paulo state.

Water-conserving techniques such as mulching are usual, because leaves and kitchen garbage protect the soil from heat, retain humidity, and improve soil structure through the addition of important plant nutrients. Still, quite commonly gardeners burn rather than compost the solid waste they use, because it is considered a more acceptable practise in the urban realm.

The species we found were the Allium fistulosum (bunching onions), Petroselinum sativum (parsley), Eryngium foetidum (chicory), Piper nigrum (pepper), Capsicum frutescens (hot pepper), Ocimum basilicum (basil), Lactuca sativa (head lettuce), Chicorium intybus, Coriandrum sativum (cilantro), Talinum triangulare (talinum).

Climatic factors such as humidity, rain, and high temperature influence plant growth. In Belém the climate is quite hot and rainy, for the city is located in the Equatorial region. As to Presidente Prudente, the town is about 20º South of Equator, and has a tropical and humid environment. Having sufficient water in both cases, it’s quite beneficial for trees and fruit development, as well as for horticulture. In fact, because many poor communities cannot afford to irrigate with piped water, some of the gardeners depend exclusively on rainfall. Only 3 of the families inquired possessed or used wells in Presidente Prudente and about 13.5% (75 agriculture spaces) in Belém. Fortunately both cities have enough rainfall to permit farming for several months a year.

Consequently, green and productive tracts of land mark city landscape in the two surveyed urban spaces. Fruits being the most abundant natural features, either in inner and peripheral agricultural areas (86.8% of the cultivated plots in Presidente Prudente and 95% in Belém), they are followed by medicinal plants (see table 2) and vegetables (46.4% in Prudente and 21.6% in Belém), competition being very stiff between shacks, houses and gardens in the more densely populated neighbourhoods.

We should notice that market gardening is an important item on Brazilian political agenda. All over the country there are examples of urban authorities that consider agricultural land important and useful within city boundaries. UA literature has emphasised the positive role local governments in cities like Fortaleza (NE) or Curitiba(S) had on this issue (UNDP 1996). That’s also the case in Belém, where either the municipality and the Pará state government sponsor and strongly support a green belt development area, on public land located in the Northern islands of Outeiro and Mosqueiro, where vegetables, fruits and the raising of chickens and ducks are widely stimulated.

Simultaneously, poultry has increased enormously inside the big Amazonian city where 34% of the families we interviewed were involved in this activity, as well as it has grown in the nearby island of Cotijuba (W of the city centre) as a result of this good governance. Being ducks one of the most appreciated delicacies in the Northern States, (duck with tucupi sauce) the raising of the birds is often seen as a quite lucrative business even in the poorest neighbourhoods, often victimized by floods, because aquatic birds can obviously swim.

Presidente Prudente municipality, where a project called “Feed Prudente” stimulates non-built plots occupation with vegetable gardens by low-income families, especially because local authorities lack funds to clean and maintain those public areas, shows concern about this issue too. Additionally, extension services provide contracts with private landowners, so that urban growers can develop more land in the most peripheral neighbourhoods; they lend or give away inputs like ploughing machines, seeds and water pumps.

Cassava, beans, onions, corn, sweet potato and lettuce are the main productions, some of them rain-fed, others intensively irrigated, as we mentioned, sold for profit on the streets or to a few selected high middle-income families, interested on “health food”. Allium fistulosum L, meaning, bunching onions (34.3% of spaces) grow best in this medium sized town, for bulb crops are sensitive to day length and heat, requiring moderate temperatures.

Nutritional properties of cassava leaves, particularly calcium, iron and vitamin C make it an obvious choice in the Northern states, where it has been cropped for ages by the Indians. In Belém a highly appreciated delicacy called “maniçoba” is consumed by urban growers, the cassava leafy parts being provided, in this case, by peri-urban farms. But in São Paulo state there’s no such good habit in meeting food needs with the aerial plant part, so only the caloric roots are eligible. Cassava was planted by 22.5% of families surveyed in Presidente Prudente.

Food security is basically defined as “access by all people at all times to the food required for a healthy life” (Mougeot 1994, p.18). Consequently, it shouldn’t surprise that local authorities start displaying a very positive attitude towards city farming, in a country were urban poverty is evident even to the less attentive tourist. Due to high transportation costs, favoured by the 1950s option for the individual automobile and aerial transportation, to the vast extensions of Brazilian geography, the long distances that trucks or planes have to travel within the country, and additionally to the internationalisation of urban food-supply systems, grocery prices tend to rise, the population health to decline, provoking concern about access to a qualitative and quantitative daily nutrition.

Basic luxury for the urban poor, food cultivation inside city boundaries is, according to the sample results, a privilege to about one in three Brazilian households. Considering that low-income families of cultivators surveyed spend two thirds of their budget on food, being their budget less then 250 US$ a month, and lower-middle income families (that earn up to 600 US$ a month) usually spend about 50%, urban agriculture is a desirable strategy to overcome food insecurity, to ameliorate food self-reliance, and to improve the nutritional health of urban residents.

Brazilians believe in herbal remedies to combat ailments ranging from cancer to colds. Their knowledge comes from trial and error with plant remedies, but also from traditional methods imported from Europe, together with Portuguese colonization; ancient tribal practises imported from Africa, together with the slaves; herbal remedies from Asia, imported with Japanese immigrants; or then ancient beliefs learnt from several Indian tribes that still rely on nothing else but medicinal plants from the forests and South American rich savannas (cerrado), to cure diseases, providing a considerable and popular knowledge passed down from generation to generation.

In fact, it’s well known that many plants have an arsenal of bioactive substances that in some way affect living cells, therefore being of significant value against pains, aches, wounds and all sorts of health troubles. Ginger (Zingiber officinalis Roscoe), for instance, contains at least 10 antiviral compounds and studies have shown it reduces vertigo and motion sickness (Swerdlow 2000). We found it was cultivated in 12 urban spaces in Belém, but in general it is widely crushed and used in Brazil to make a tea that fights the flu.

In the Amazonian city of Belém we found that 372 of the 555 families inquired grew some type of medicinal herbs in vases or gardens. The Lippia alba being the most widely used plant, for tisanes that cure stomach aches and treat insomnia, it is rather curious to notice Brazilians gave it the same common name of another European plant species - Melissa officinalis L.- supposedly also with the same medicinal applications. After the wild lemon bush (see table 2), Belém’s growers crop and use Cymbopogon citratus (the Citronelle) to combat fever, headaches and stomach pains. Being such a prolific species, these grasses can grow spontaneously anywhere, from household gardens to river margins, paths and street borders. In Europe the species is industrialized.

In S. Paulo state, Lippia is less popular, far outnumbered by an alien species from Chile, the Peumus boldus (Chilean boldus), very useful in the treatment of digestive disorders. The leaves are boiled into a brew recommended to the one’s who have “bad liver”. Mentha piperita (peppermint) is the next choice of urban farmers, highly consumed in order to fight the flu, but also very useful to the bowels. In Belém, several species of Menthas are used as spices, for fine fish and meat dishes.

In Brazil, and according to scientific literature, Aloe vera is considered nature’s remedy for cancer. It is remarkable, though, the number of low-income women who declared they mainly use it to beautify the hair and combat baldness.

Cinnamon trees are popular in Belém’s gardens, for they smell wonderfully and the leaves are used in digestive teas. The bark is also extracted to bake nice and tasty cakes, one of the popular ones being the macaxeira cake (cassava), consumed frequently for breakfast. It’s quite common belief in Brazil that a cinnamon with milk and sugar cup per night gives a profound and deep sleep to the most stressed individual.

While Ruta graveolens was imported from Europe and is preserved in vases or planted in gardens against bad thoughts, envies and for another quite supersticious reasons, it’s widely known the plant causes abortion. Costus spicatus leaves are boiled for internal and external usage to treat urinary problems, not surprisingly, for the diuretic property is an established fact for various species of Costus.

Other less common, but yet very interesting non-prescripted botanical drug is for instance the Amazonian Bryophyllum calicinum Salisb., named after a river fish – pirarucu – whose leaf is edible for its secretion, in the form of eye drops to combat glaucoma or as a protection against skin infections. It was found in 34 yards in Belém and 4 gardens in Prudente.

Many fruit and nut trees are also used for medicinal purposes, as we remarked. That’s the case with Passiflora edulis leaves, known for its sedative powers; the mango tree bark, that supposedly cures asthma; the cashew leaves, bark and seeds used against sifilis; the Citrus vulgaris fruit, recommended to mothers recovering from child birth; the Citrus medica and aurantifolia used against the flu; guava leaves, bark and flowers to cure diarrhoea; and last but not least, the unparalleled açaí (Euterpe oleracea) whose aerial roots are used in external applications against rheumatism, arthritis, tooth aches and bruises.

We hope this study fills a gap in UA literature, up to know mainly concerned with theoretical issues or then empirical studies on peri-urban agriculture and food farming practises around the cities of the world. By focusing our surveys in intra-urban spaces we could characterize better the long forgotten household gardens, providing information about who grows food and what other produce urban farmers are engaged with. Hence, medicinal herbs cultivation and usage were emphasized as to urban gardens in Brazil, differentiating this study from other similar research on urban agriculture from other countries and continents.

Intra-urban research narrated here also found interesting examples of urban-shifting farms within Belém and especially Presidente Prudente municipalities, along with favourable public policies as to intertwined agricultural and residential spaces.

Urban cultivation is social, cultural, economically important and environmentally sustainable in Brazil. The urban actors engaged in the subject are producers, consumers and management/planning authorities, whose support and guidance for success is, in a sense, responsible for the continuous increase in UA practitioners.

That’s because agriculture in urban and peri-urban spaces provides low-income families with the possibility of food security, and opportunities for jobs and profit. It enhances nutrition for the least economically stable by improving access to food with higher levels of micronutrients and protein, at lower costs. Urban agriculture can also be a response to the degradation of the environment through waste recycling, oxygen production, and city beautification, efficiently using idle or under-utilized land next to the city centre or within built-up areas.

Finally we should stress that our research hypothesis was widely confirmed by the surveys. Even though commercial agriculture enterprises do exist in city belts, most of the food produced is for home consumption or barter between neighbours, grown usually around residential buildings existent within the urban tissue.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Drakakis-Smith, D. (1996) “Urban Food Systems and the Poor in Developing Countries”, Institute of British Geographers, Strathclyde, pp.1-20.

Source: Surveys from Belém (1998) and Presidente Prudente (1999)

Source: Surveys from Belém (1998) and Presidente Prudente (1999)