Água Boa II, Rio Pardo de Minas - Minas Gerais, Brazil, 2018
Geralda, 68, is an artisan, farmer, cook, geraizeira, mother, grandmother and Antônio's wife. When I arrived at her house, where part of our crew would stay, I noticed that several circles of food were drying up in the sun at the courtyard. Each of them had a purpose: straw for handicrafts, cassava peel to feed the cattle, gum to cook beiju and starch. Nothing, absolutely nothing, was wasted there. I went into the house and there she was, placing the gum on the trays to bake in the wood oven and make the starch. It’s people like Geralda, her family and her farming community who preserve the nature on which we depend to survive and whose existence and ways of life are seriously threatened.
