Earning less than 1,000 reais ($185) per month, below the national minimum wage, Alvares said her only option was to make cuts to household spending, including reducing meal sizes for herself and her two teenagers.

“Prices have practically doubled. For my family, meat no longer enters the house and I started shopping in stores that sell expired products,” said Alvares, a single mother from São Paulo.

Brazil has been grappling with double-digit annual inflation since September, with consumer prices up by 12% in a year, according to the statistics agency IBGE.

Countries around the world have been facing rising food and fuel costs, largely driven by the impact of the Ukraine war.

In Brazil, lower rainfall has also reduced crop yields and hydropower generation, adding to upward price pressure, said Andre Braz, an economist at Fundação Getúlio Vargas (FGV), a socioeconomic research and education institute.

In São Paulo, prices for staple goods such as wheat flour, beans, rice, cooking oil and milk have risen by more than 20% in a year, according to the Inter-Union Department of Statistics and Socio-Economic Studies (DIEESE), a union-founded research organization.

Meanwhile, average earnings nationwide have dropped 7.2% since 2021, said IBGE, indicating the labor market recovery from COVID-19 has been centered in lower-income occupations.

BUSINESS CHALLENGES

Alvares started a small business making pastries and cakes after she lost her job during the COVID-19 pandemic, but rising costs have eaten into her income.

She has put up her prices by 7% – but her profits are down by 60%.

Despite doing “everything to keep the sales,” including absorbing much of the price rises in ingredients and fuel, she says she has lost many customers as they cut back on non-essential spending.

In Rio de Janeiro, Anna Karolyna Mendes and her family also started a food business during the pandemic, selling packed lunches to low-paid street workers like drivers and delivery staff.

They have had to be flexible to stay profitable.

“Everything became more expensive, (so) we had to reinvent ourselves,” said Mendes.

“When there’s a sale of a specific vegetable, for instance, we buy much more of that product and change the recipes to use the same ingredient.”

A year ago, the family shopped at two markets – now, they shop at five.

“For those who work in the streets … the food we make is cheaper than going to the market on their own,” she said.

While Mendes said she believed they could stay competitive and profitable, Alvares is looking at getting a second part-time job to supplement her income.

“I’m very worried,” she said. “It’s getting more and more complicated to maintain even the basic bills and the situation is snowballing.”

This article was produced by the Thomson Reuters Foundation. Visit them at https://news.trust.org/

In its recent report, the UN and the International Panel of Climate Change estimates that global food production is responsible for 21-37% of “anthropogenic emissions”. What lies behind this Anthropogen that treats humankind in general as responsible for the climate change emergency? The destruction of the Amazon is in fact the consequence of a geopolitical conflict, connecting Brazil to China, China to the US – and Brazil, as a member of the Mercosur, to the EU.

When it comes to the climate change crisis, the humble soybean has a lot to answer for. Not the bean itself, of course, but the human production and consumption related to it, and more particularly the national politics surrounding it.

When President Trump declared trade war on China, one of the direct impacts was a Chinese response placing 25% tariffs on soy imports from the USA. At the same time, after the election of President Bolsonaro in Brazil, previous legal limitations on deforestation of the Amazon and expansion into the Cerrado, in significant part for soy production, were relaxed.

As the deceptively named Environment Minister, Ricardo Salles, said in a recent interview for the Financial Times (23.08.2019), laws were too restrictive, and commercial development must instead “monetize” the Amazon. Turn fires into dollars.

The result is a perfect climate-change storm. Brazil had already overtaken the USA as the main exporter of soy in the second decade of the twenty first century. This trade war has stimulated a great leap forward in exports to China, already by far the largest importer of soy from Brazil – over 85% of Brazil’s exports by 2018.

Two climate-change denying Presidents, plus growing demand for soy as animal feed for China’s growing meat consumption, plus deforestation and land conversion in Brazil. Result? An explosive climate change acceleration event.

While this event is significant in its own right, it also challenges how we need to think about the nature of the climate change crisis. Two highly influential recent publications in Nature and The Lancet identifying the greatest risks of transgressing planetary boundaries for the sustainability of human (and non-human) life affirmed strikingly that “food production is the largest cause of global environmental change”.

It accounts for up to 37% of total global greenhouse gases, two and a half times more that total global transport. The urgency of addressing land use and food production and consumption has just been highlighted by the UN’s International Panel on Climate Change report, Climate Change and Land. It appeared only days before the news of the burning Amazon hit the headlines.

Moreover, world population is set to rise from nearly 7 billion to 9 billion. At least as significant, there are dramatic shifts in the food people consume, particularly transitions to greater meat consumption.

So, food perhaps presents the biggest but also the most intractable threat of the climate change crisis. In all the National Plans for climate change mitigation and underpinning the 2016 Paris Agreement, food production and consumption was marginalized, or even in many cases omitted. This potato was politically too hot to handle in many national contexts.

So, is this a crisis brought about by the human species in aggregate: The Anthropogen of the IPCC? Or, as many on the left have also argued, is this crisis a product of global capitalism, a general economic engine of limitless expansion and appropriation of nature: The Capitalogen of climate change crisis? Present profit before future planet.

The Trump-Bolsonaro, Brazil-USA-China, climate change crisis event illustrates why we need better social science than either of these globalist accounts, and certainly why we need to pay more attention to national politics in any analysis.

Food production and consumption are especially useful for forcing us to think directly of how different societies are endowed with different environmental resources, as an almost taken for granted, but nonetheless formative background for economic development, and for the national politics of that development.

Societies, and different political economies, differ enormously in how they generate greenhouse gases, how they consume energy, food, water, and how they trade internationally, with different climate change impacts. They also face different political challenges in confronting the climate change emergency. Not every country has the Amazon in its back garden.

Before I started my research into food production and consumption in China, I had not fully appreciated the scarcity of its agricultural land, in spite of its extensive national territory. It has less quality agricultural land per capita than even the UK, and a fraction of that of the USA or Brazil.

Its water resources for food production are even scarcer, a quarter of the world average. Within this environmental context, and following a long history of famines, the politics of food production was dominated by the twin imperative of food security and food self-sufficiency.

Following the death of Mao Tse Tung and the market socialist reforms of Deng Xiaoping, agricultural intensification was combined with a major fragmentation of land ownership under the Household Responsibility System. Egalitarian distribution of leasehold land to 250 million peasant farmers, market incentives, and huge increase in the use of chemical fertilizers aimed to satisfy the twin imperative.

As a consequence, from being a net importer of nitrogen phosphate fertilizer to a net exporter, China now uses more than 30% of the world total, more than the whole of Northern Europe and the USA put together. With peasants given subsidies to use fertilizers, the amount of fertilizer per hectare is many times that of Europe.

Both Chinese experts and the UN Food and Agriculture Organization recognize the result: an ecological catastrophe. Overuse of nitrogen fertilizer is a major source of nitrogen oxide, a powerful greenhouse gas. So, apart from acidification of the soil and eutrophication of surface water, rice production in particular contributes significantly to China’s greenhouse gas emissions.

And now, as agricultural productivity itself was threatened, China recognizes the problem, and has come up with its distinctive political solutions, a limitation of the use of nitrogen phosphates to a 1% increase until 2020, and a cap on total use thereafter.

This brief account exemplifies the need for the concept of sociogenesis of climate change. A distinctive political economy, operating within its specific land and water resource environment, generates a climate change crisis and then its own characteristic mitigation policies.

This is not a dynamic of a socially amorphous Anthropogen or a globalist Capitalogen in interaction with Nature in general. This is a distinctively Chinese dynamic, in its own environmental context.

Then, at the turn of the century, China recognized that limits of its own land-water resources were such that it could no longer equate food security with food self-sufficiency. Especially to meet the demand for increasing meat consumption, pork in particular, for a population previously unable to afford it, China decisively shifted to importing soy beans from Brazil to feed its expanding pig production.

Enter Brazil. Although Europe had led the way in using soy protein to replace animal protein after the BSE crisis, China followed on to become its biggest market. Brazil’s climate change crisis is almost the opposite to China’s.

From the time of the military dictatorship (1964-1975) there has been a politically driven process of expanding agricultural production through extensification, converting uncultivated land into agricultural land, in an inexorable progression from timber extraction, to cattle and soy production.

This led to the earlier “arc of fire”. Brazil is now the largest exporter of beef, poultry, coffee, orange juice, and, overtaking the USA, soy. Where China’s agricultural land was shrinking, Brazil’s was increasing by 5 million hectares every year since the 1990s, particularly into the Legal Amazon.

In Brazil, big multinational capital, much of it Brazilian, is certainly involved, dominating agricultural production. The top 1% of farms with over 1000 hectares occupy over 45% of cultivated land.

The Roncador Group has a farm of 150,000 hectares, the Amaggi Group Tanguro farm, 80,000 hectares. JBS is the top global meat producer and exporter in the world, and the total Brazilian beef herd now exceeds 200 million.

It is calculated that the methane production of this herd from enteric fermentation exceeds the CO2 emissions from Brazilian land clearance and deforestation.

This is the distinctive Brazilian climate change crisis, not a generic Capitalogen, but a politically fostered national economy in interaction with a unique resource environment. And, until the arrival of Bolsonaro, a distinctive set of policies was put in place to limit land extensification: the registration of land-ownership, pioneering satellite tracking of land incursions, moratoriums on soy and beef production on any newly converted land.

These mitigation policies succeeded in radically reducing, but far from eliminating Amazonian deforestation, and significant ecologies, notably the Cerrado in Mato Grosso, were much less protected.

One more sociogenic contrast. In both China and Brazil, with increasing per capita income, there has been a transition to eating more meat. China now outstrips the USA for pork consumption, and in overall meat consumption had reached an annual per capita quantity of 52.4 kilos in 2011.

Brazil has overtaken the European average, with 92.6 kilos, with beef the premier meat with its much higher GHG impact. None approach Trump beef steak America, with an average of 135 kilos for all meats.

At the opposite extreme, India with its Hindu nationalist vegetarianism, persecuting Muslim beef eaters, has the lowest per capita meat consumption, with a less pronounced transition to more people eating more meat. Cultures of consumption – not individual consumer choices – have major climate change consequences.

Out of sociogenic contrasts come sociogenic connections. Global food trade is not from anywhere to anywhere. Trade flows are highly structured, and in the case of China and Brazil, opposites attract. China’s lack of land and water resources creates the demand for Brazil’s abundance.

China’s politics of trade condition this trade: it imports only whole soybeans, for its own animal feed industry to process. A deal between Brazil and China to trade in national currencies escapes the dominant dollar as reserve currency for international trade. This is a specific nation-to-nation connection between production and consumption. From Brexit, as we know only too well, trade connections are politically made and un-made.

One of the major limitations of the UN brokered Paris Agreement with its national plans for climate change mitigation is that it only treats nations as GHG producers. Trade, and the connection between producers and consumers, is a sustainability black hole.

As has now become only too clear from President Macron’s finger-pointing at Bolsonaro, the trade agreement between the EU and the Mercosur failed to enshrine legal commitments on conserving the Amazon or the Cerrado. The soy connection between China and Brazil shows that nation-to-nation trade is a critical dynamic of the sociogenic climate change emergency.

This takes us back to the beginning. Trump and Bolsonaro have just pressed the accelerator on that dynamic. Economies are political, and the politics of economies are driving the climate change emergency. Combating climate change involves contesting those politics within our different societal and environmental contexts.

One more reason to be European in a European Union context, engaging in the politics of our shared environmental resources and for legally enforceable sustainable international trade. Or go down the route of environmental catastrophe with the Trump-Bolsonaro politics of planetary destruction.

Mark Harvey is Emeritus Professor at the Center for Research in Economic Sociology and Innovation at the University of Essex. He is also Honorary Professor, Department of Sociology, Sustainable Consumption Institute, University of Manchester.

His latest book is Inequality and Democratic Egalitarianism. Marx’s economy and beyond and other essays published by Manchester University Press.

This article appeared originally in Open Democracy – https://www.opendemocracy.net/

"We want to improve the image of the Brazilian product among decision makers in the Middle East," stated the coordinator of the Image and Market Access Unit at the Apex, Juarez Leal.

Working with the end consumer is one of the ideas that the organizations believes may help increase Brazilian exports to the Arab market.

"Participating in fairs alone is not enough to position yourself on the international market," said Leal, who felt the potential of Arab demand for food products this year at the Gulfood, the food sector fair in Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates.

According to him, Brazil has much more than commodities to offer the Arabs. "We are a country with enormous diversity," he added. Dubai should be the center for the Apex pilot project, but the idea is to expand to other countries. "If it works out, we are going to take it to the United States."

To participate in the project, the Apex is going to select around 40 companies, preferably with experience in export, to present their products to potential Arab consumers during a business roundtable to take place on February 17th at the Intercontinental Hotel, in Dubai.

On the previous day, the organization is going to make a general presentation about Brazil and promote a press conference. In the evening, the Apex should also offer a Brazilian dinner to 200 guests, who should sample dishes prepared by Brazilian chef Morena Leite. To remember the event, the guests will be given a book about the Arab contribution to Brazilian cuisine.

According to Leal, the Apex is going to cover travel expenses to Dubai of around 50 importers and distributors so that they may participate in the event. The idea is to set up, for a year, Brazilian shelves in the main supermarkets in the Middle East.

Businessmen who guarantee US$ 1 million in purchases of Brazilian products, for example, may get US$ 100,000 in promotion, including products and sampling counters, among other promotional activities.

In the opinion of the secretary general at the Arab Brazilian Chamber of Commerce, Michel Alaby, who gave a talk at the presentation of the program, the initiative is very positive. "It is not enough to sell the product without selling the brand," he said.

According to him, consumption of food in the Arab countries is growing constantly. Last year, for example, the Arab market imported US$ 10 billion in food and the forecast for 2008 is for the value to reach US$ 14 billion. "Since 2000, there has been growth of 150%," he added. Grain, milk and dairy products, meats and fruit are among the main products imported by the Arabs.

According to Alaby, the arid climate and little arable land in most of the Arab countries contribute to this strong demand for food in the region, mainly in the countries in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), which includes the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Oman, Qatar and Kuwait.

According to the analyst of the Market Intelligence Unit at the Apex, Rodrigo Cota, the countries of the GCC presented a great potential for Brazilian companies. High income, oil exporters, population growth and low food import tariffs are the main characteristics of this bloc.

"In the other Arab countries, the economies are poorer and the tariffs (for imports of foods) are higher, but the Apex has still identified opportunities in the food and beverage sectors," stated Cota.

According to him, Brazil had an 81% market share in poultry in the Arab market in 2007 and presented average annual growth of 26% between 2002 and 2007. In the sector of milk and dairy products, the average annual growth of Brazilian exports was 107% in the period. In the case of juice, the increase was 114%. "Imports of fruit are on the rise in the region," stated the analyst.

In the seminar launching the project another matter discussed was the matter of halal food, prepared according to religious requirements. For Brazilian companies interested in obtaining halal certification, the Brazilian Halal Food Center (Cibal) may help in the matter.

Another area considered important by the Apex to guarantee good positioning of the Brazil brand on the international market is the package. Good packages help products when exporting," stated the coordinator of the packaging nucleus at the Higher School of Advertising and Marketing (ESPM), Fabio Mestriner. According to him, Brazilian packages are now of international level and, many times, they are decisive to the success of the product.

"Abroad, for example, products depend exclusively on packages," stated the designer. According to him, in large supermarket chains there are over 100,000 items exhibited and the consumer does not ignore the package when buying. "The package places the product and interferes in consumer reception. It is a powerful marketing tool for export."

Anba

According to Abia's balance sheet, the volume of foodstuffs produced in June was 1.68% greater than in May. When compared with June last year, the volume was 6.18% higher. In the accumulated result for the year, production was 7.97% greater than in the same period of last year, and considering the last 12-month period, there was growth of 4.73%.

The president of Abia, Edmundo Klotz, ascribed the expansion of consumption and revenues posted by the sector to the rise in job positions, in the population's income, and to better remuneration of workers. Klotz stated that the first half was very good for the food industry:

"Despite the high costs and inflation, there certainly was an expansion of wages and income, and at quite a significant rate."

He highlighted the meat, frozen food, and dehydrated food sectors, and asserted that the population began to eat better, and that nobler products were the most consumed.

According to the projections of Abia, revenues by the sector this year should reach 268 billion reais (US$ 165.8 million), 16.2% more than in 2007, when they totaled to 230.6 billion reais (US$ 142.6 billion). In foodstuffs alone, the organization estimates revenues at 228.1 billion reais (US$ 141.1 billion). The remaining 39.9 billion reais (US$ 24.6 billion) should be generated by beverage sales.

Agricultural Income

The Brazilian agricultural income, which takes into account the gross value of the 20 main agricultural products, should total 156.7 billion reais (US$ 96.9 billion) in 2008, approximately 17% more than last year.

The figures were calculated by the Strategic Management Advisory at the Brazilian Ministry of Agriculture and disclosed last week, and since almost all crops have already been harvested, the estimate should not be drastically altered.

The highest growth rate should be that of the Midwest Region, where agricultural income should go from 28 billion reais (US$ 17.3 billion) to 39.4 billion reais (US$ 24.3 billion), growth of 40.6%. To arrive at the result, the technicians multiply the crop size by the price received by farmers in the country's leading producer regions.

The actual value, inflation discounted, is obtained from the General Price Index – Internal Availability (IGP-DI), of the Getúlio Vargas Foundation (FGV). Besides the Midwest, which was the highlight, the South, Southeast and Northeast regions recorded growth rates of 8.2%, 4.7% and 4.8%, respectively.

The North region was the only one in which income saw a reduction, of 12.9%, even though grain production increased by 13.1%. That was so because, for income to rise, it is crucial that product prices do not fall.

ABr

According to Andréia Nunes, International Market coordinator at Brazil Trade Shows, the company in charge of promoting the event, one of the fair's aim is to bring foreign companies that already operate in the country and are willing to expand into the Northeast.

"Consumption in the Northeast grew 143% since 2002," says Andréia, to give an example of the potential of the Northeastern market for foodstuffs and beverages.

According to data compiled by Brazil Trade Shows, in the last five years, the region attracted more than 2,500 companies in the segment. For that reason, the coordinator believes that the market can be attractive. The state of Pernambuco, where the fair takes place, has the Port of Suape, through which products usually arrive in the Northeast.

Andréia underscores that the region is growing significantly due to tourism, a sector that has close ties with the foodstuff segment. In addition to showcasing food and beverages,

The 6th International Food Products, Packaging, Equipments, Accessories and Services Trade Show also displays technologies for the sector's industry, packaging, products for food services, such as industrial kitchens, raw material for food manufacturing and logistics services for the area.

The fair started being promoted in the Northeast five years ago. Events will be promoted on the sidelines of the exhibition, such as one of the legs of the 3rd Brazilian Cup of Pizzerias.

In addition to new trends in pizza preparation, a contest will be held whose finals will take place next year, during the Fispal Food Service, in São Paulo. Finalists come from ten eliminatory phases, held in the Brazilian cities where pizzas are consumed the most.

Another event held during the Fispal Northeast is the Gourmet Show, as well as cooking contests for dishes such as meat, Japanese food, pasta and typical northeastern dishes.

Last year, the Pernambuco fair received 26,148 visitors and 350 exhibiting companies. Organizers estimate business deals worth 800 million reais (US$ 508 million) to have been generated.

Among the visitors, 12% were production engineers and 11% were commercial managers. Enrolments for exhibitors may be done until the last week of October, or until sales spaces are sold out.

Service

6th Fispal Northeast
November 4 to 7, 2008
From 4 pm to 10 pm
Pernambuco Convention center
Address: Complexo Viário Vice-Governador Barreto Guimarães, S/N – Olinda – Pernambuco state
Site: www.fispal.com
Telephone: (+55 11) 3234 7746
E-mail: international@btsp.com.br

On the sidelines, members of the mission will also visit food industries and research institutes in order to form partnerships and stay up-to-date with global technological trends.

Foodstuffs sectors to participate include beverages, bakery, biscuits and fine bread, meats and preserves, dairy products and eggs, frozen foods, diet products, fine foods, food ingredients and preservatives, freshly prepared products, fruit and vegetable, grocery products, nutrition, organics, chicken, seafood and wine.

The mission is organized by the National Confederation of Industries (CNI) by means of the Brazilian Network of International Business Centers (CIN Network) and articulated by the Federation of Industries of the State of Rio Grande do Sul (Fiergs).

Number of participants is limited and submissions must be made by July 30 via email at karla.antmann@fiepr.org.br .

Service

CIN
Telephone: (+55 41) 3271-9106
Site: www.cinpr.org.br

CNI

He also insisted that escalating oil prices are pushing up freight costs, which in turn affects world food prices.

"Ethanol production has not contributed in any way to the food price crises," Lula told a news conference in Accra, where he was attending a United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, UNCTAD.

However UNCTAD has criticized Brazil for encouraging its farmers to grow biofuels including sugarcane, castor beans and corn, instead of traditional food crops. The UN body says the shift is a factor in the reduction of food production.

Lula said such criticism was unfounded and that there is enough land for production of both food and biofuels, especially in Africa.

To solve the global food crisis, "rich countries should end subsidies to their agricultural production and they should open market access to agricultural produce from the developing world," underlined the Brazilian president.

"It is not fair that more than one billion people consume less than the necessary calories and protein for our survival," the Brazilian president said. He also called on developed countries to transfer their agricultural expertise to the developing world to enable them to produce their required crops

"The success that Brazil has achieved in food production can be done in Africa," he said after a meeting with Ghana's President John Kufuor. "Forty years ago, Brazil's savannah zones were considered wastelands, but technology has changed that" and Africa can do the same.

The two countries signed three agreements to transfer technology to Ghana for the production of biofuels and manioc.

Mercopress

In the early 1600s the Portuguese asserted their claim to the northern region of Brazil, expelling French, English and Dutch intruders who had set up small outposts in the region. Our Lady of Presépio Fort was established in 1616 at the site of the present-day city of Belém, strategically placed at the southern entrance of the Amazon river.

The Portuguese also set up several forts in the Amazon basin, including one that is now the city of Manaus. By the middle of the eighteenth century there were about fifty settlements along the river banks. The north underwent little further development until the latter part of the nineteenth century when the rubber boom catapulted the cities of Manaus and Belém into great prosperity and importance.

The euphoria was short-lived, however, because the success of plantation rubber in Malaysia, an industry started with smuggled Amazon rubber tree seeds, drove down rubber prices and ended Brazil's monopoly in 1912.

Today, mining, manufacturing, lumbering and, in Manaus, free-trade zone status, sustain the economy. Many visitors to Manaus and Belém, still the area's two major population centers, spend a day or two exploring these historic and friendly cities before taking off on excursions on the river or into the rain forest.

The Amazon basin was home to Tupi Indians, relatives of the same tribe of Indians who met the first Portuguese arrivals on the northeast coast. Their diet of manioc, corn, beans, yams, peanuts, peppers, wild fruits and fresh fish is still very much in evidence today among the inhabitants of the north.

Much of the population lives in small settlements in houses built on stilts along the main  rivers, or along the maze of narrow channels called igarapés, formed when the river floods and cuts through a region of the jungle. These inhabitants of the hinterlands, or caboclos, are of mixed Portuguese and Indian ancestry.

For many, growing and laboriously detoxifying the poisonous variety of manioc grown on nearby land above the flood level is a way of life. The coarse meal produced from these tubers is a complement to every meal, sprinkled generously over just about anything.

The cuisine of the north draws heavily on its Indian heritage. One of the best-known dishes is pato no tucupi, duck marinated in lemon juice, oil and garlic, then roasted, and finally boiled in tucupi, a sauce made with the liquid extracted from grated manioc tubers and seasoned with jambu leaves and chicory.

Jambu is an intriguing jungle plant whose leaves and stem produce a very faint numbing sensation in the lips and tongue. This herb is also an important component of a flavorful seasoned soup called tacacá, which contains dried shrimp and tapioca topped with tucupi sauce.

It is traditionally served in bowls fashioned out of gourds, or cuias. The classic dish maniçoba is a stew containing various dried, smoked and fresh meats, along with giblets. It is flavored with ground manioc leaves, or maniva, which also color the stew a dark green.

Many dishes feature fish, a basic dietary component in the north. Some preparations use a spice called urucu(m), or colorau, as a flavoring and coloring.

Urucu(m) is made by coarsely grinding the orange-red seeds from the berries of the annatto tree. The spice is known in the United States by the name annatto or achiote.

Caldeirada is a popular fish stew similar to a bouillabaisse. The most valuable commercial fish of the region is the mammoth pirarucu, marketed primarily in a dried salted form. Its delicious flesh is quite meaty, almost like chicken. A popular dish made with this fish is posta de pirarucu seco ao leite de coco, or a slice of fish served in a delicious coconut sauce.

Certain inedible parts of this fish are also valued. The large, brown-tipped scales are sold as fingernail files and are used in a variety of handicrafts, especially masks. Even the tongue is recycled, its raspy surface useful as a grater.

Another economically important fish featured on menus is the tasty tambaqui. This amazing fish is equipped with powerful, molar-like teeth for crushing its food – the fruits and seeds, especially the hard seeds of the rubber tree, that fall into the water of the flooded forest.

A regional specialty is picadinho de tambaqui, which is a mixture of fish pieces served with rice, jambu leaves and toasted manioc meal. The beautifully colored tucunaré, or peacock bass, is also a prized food fish. It is the coveted catch of fly-fishermen who are beginning to discover the thrills of angling for it in the Amazon basin.

A considerable number of catfish, such as surubim, caparari and filhote, can be sampled. Filhote are juvenile specimens of the largest fish of the Amazon, the giant piraí­ba, which reaches lengths of 10 feet and weights of 300 pounds. All of these fish must be tried in the restaurants and seen in the markets!

Some of the most traditional and best-loved dishes native to the Amazon region are made with turtle (tartaruga) and its eggs, and manatee (peixe-boi). Although these are endangered species and won't appear on the menu, some restaurants still offer them.

Perhaps Brazil's greatest treasure is her bounty of fruit. Many varieties of tropical fruit are not cultivated but grow freely in the wetland areas or in the uplands. Some are palm fruits. As is true for so many of the natural features of the land, most fruits bear Tupi Indian names. Even today some of these fruits are unknown in other regions of the country, particularly in the south. To the tourist the sheer variety of new and unusual types can be an overwhelming experience.
 
Brazilians use fruits in many ways. They are eaten raw, made into juices, jellies, marmalades, compotes, fermented beverages such as wines and liqueurs, syrups, flavorings for ice cream, desserts of endless combinations, and in many instances made into a sweet firm paste of fruit pulp mixed with sugar.

The names for these pastes typically end with "ada."  For example, the fruit we know as guava is called goiaba by the Brazilians, and in the form of a sweet paste becomes goiabada.

In Manaus and especially Belém, the outdoor markets are a showcase for the regional fruits. The Foods & Flavors Guide in this book provides detailed descriptions of fruits and other produce to help with their indentification in the markets. To truly experience Brazil, try as many of these fruits as you can!

Among the palm fruits are pupunha, açaí­, buriti (miriti), patauá, bacaba, tucumã and uxi. Pupunha, which has yellow, orange-red or green skin when ripe, is usually sold with the fruit still in clusters on the stems. It is never eaten raw. Rather, it is boiled and eaten warm, often with honey placed in the depression left by the large seed.

The small, blue-black palm fruit called açaí­ is made into a juice that becomes a purple paste when manioc meal and sugar are added. The mixture tastes somewhat like black raspberries. Colorful cooking oils can be extracted from some of the palm fruits. Buriti generates a red oil, patauá a light-green oil, and bacaba a yellow one.

Some other fruits to look for are cupuaçu, cacau, graviola, cajá, bacuri, cajá manga, jaca, murici, ata or fruta do conde, ingá, jambo, maracujá and biribá. The aromatic cupuaçu is an easy favorite. This fairly large (up to 10 inches long), oblong fruit with a tough brown exterior and light-yellow pulp is closely related to cacau, whose seeds are the source of chocolate.

Cupuaçu forms the basis of many popular desserts, including cakes, tortes and puddings. The sweet juice made from cupuaçu pulp becomes a delicious drink and is an ingredient in many desserts such as torta do pará, which specifically features the familiar Brazil nut called castanha do pará, native to the state of Pará.

The graviola is a somewhat lopsided dark-green fruit with numerous soft spines on the surface. It makes a marvelous flavoring for ice creams, or sorvetes.

Two of the most exceptional fruits are guaraná and caju. Guaraná is one of the best-loved fruits in Brazil and much folklore is based around it. The edible part is the black seed within some white, fleshy material. When ripe, the fruit has an uncanny resemblance to the human eye as it "peers" out of its opened, bright orange-red capsule.

Ingesting the seeds produces high energy levels, which the Indians attributed to supernatural powers, but which we now know is the effect of caffeine.

A legend of the Sataré-Maué Indians explains why the seeds resemble eyes. A beautiful Indian woman named Onhiamuacabê gave birth to a child sired by a mysterious being. This child was killed for eating some forbidden nuts, and at his burial site, a guaraná bush grew from his eye.

According to the legend, the bush also brought forth a child from whom the Maué tribe descended. To the Indians, the seeds not only were a stimulant, they were an aphrodisiac and a means to prolong life. They roasted and ground the seeds, mixed them with manioc meal, and rolled the resulting paste into sticks, which were allowed to harden.

Using the rough-surfaced tongue of the pirarucu fish as a grater, they broke off small pieces of the dried guaraná paste and rehydrated them in water to make a drink. Guaraná is available today in a variety of forms, including a very popular carbonated soft drink of the same name, a syrup, a powder, in capsules and in sticks made by the caboclos.

Caju, or cashew apple, is a red or yellow fruit, resembling a bell pepper, with a pear-like taste. The cashew apple is not the real fruit, however, but the swollen flower stem. The true fruit is within the kidney-shaped sac dangling from it. Most unexpectedly, inside the sac, waiting to be roasted, is a cashew nut!

The text above is an excerpt from Eat Smart in Brazil, 2nd edition, 2006, by Joan Peterson.
 
Joan Peterson writes and publishes the Eat Smart series of guidebooks for travelers who want to get to the heart of a country's culture through its cuisine. Frustrated that general guidebooks gloss over the topic of food, she wrote the first edition of her first guide, Eat Smart in Brazil, in 1995.

She was so encouraged by the enthusiastic reception she received from travelers, foodies, and especially Brazilians themselves, that she set aside a career as biochemist at the University of Wisconsin (Madison) four years later to devote full time to helping others navigate menus and markets in foreign countries.

Since then she's written culinary guides for Turkey, Indonesia, Mexico, Poland, Morocco, India and Peru, and currently is working on Sicily. The guides to Brazil and Turkey are now available in 2nd editions.

Joan travels extensively for pleasure as well. Whenever time permits she leads culinary tours; this year she'll lead 2 tours to Turkey. She also accompanied her husband on his tours (not culinary ones) to the Pacific Rim, the Caribbean, Europe and Australia, including long stints to entertain the military during the Vietnam War.

She is a founding member of CHEW (Culinary History Enthusiasts of Wisconsin) and the director and founder of the Travel Publishers Association.
 
The Eat Smart guidebooks are available online from the publisher – www.ginkgopress.com, from Amazon www.amazon.com and from bookstores.

Sino dos Alpes is based in the city of Bom Retiro do Sul, in the southernmost Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sul, where it manufactures pork and chicken meat products, such as meat sausage, ham, spiced ham, pâté, sliced meats and mortadella.

The company was established in 1999 through a partnership between GSI and the Languiru cooperative, from Rio Grande do Sul. Each owned half of the business. In 2002, the Italian group bought the cooperative out and took over 100% of operations.

Perdigão and GSI also signed a memorandum of understanding aimed at exchanging technology for development and manufacturing of meat-based foods in Italy and Brazil, and reciprocal commercialization of products.

Sino dos Alpes has a built area of 14,000 square meters (150,000 square feet) and employs 191 people. Currently, the factory is operating with idle capacity. Since Perdigão is also a producer of raw material, it should optimize the processing capacity of the unit, which at first will be completely occupied, and then enlarged at a later phase.

Grandi Salumifici Italiani has 150-year experience in production of cold meats. In addition to Italy, where it operates 11 units, the group owns a factory in Austria and six factories in China. It also has commercial representations in Germany, France, Belgium, Croatia, Greece and Scandinavia. In 2005, the company’s revenue was US$ 626.1 million.

The purchase will increase the operations of Perdigão in Rio Grande do Sul. The company already has important exporting units in the state, in the cities of Maraú and Serafina Corrêa, in addition to animal food factories, in Gaurama and Maraú, and grain purchase branches, in Maraú, Serafina Corrêa, and Casca.

Last year, Perdigão invested approximately US$ 12.9 million in its units in Rio Grande do Sul, where it employs more than 7,800 people and has partnerships with 1,652 integrated poultry and pork producers. In the field of transports, through contracts with 111 companies, Perdigão generates another 300 indirect jobs.

One of Latin America’s foremost food companies, Perdigão ranks among the main employers in Brazil, with approximately 40,000 employees. This year, the company should have US$ 2.9 billion in profit. Late last year, the company announced an expected 10% increase in meat sales for 2007.

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"We believe that the Arab countries are an extremely promising and growing market. New countries in the region are becoming potential chicken importers," stated the foreign trade director at the company, Lucia Mitico Nagamura.

According to her, the company's interest in participating in the fair is due to the local importance. "Dubai is a great and important distribution and import center in the Middle East. The emirate is appropriate for the congregation of players in the chicken sector," she said.

Avipal has been exporting chicken to the Arab market since 2000, being present in Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Yemen, Bahrain, Qatar, Oman, Egypt and Iraq. "The Arab countries have a very significant and important representation in our chicken exports," stated Lucia. In total, the company exports to over 100 countries.

Apart from chicken, the Avipal group also trades pork, dairy products, soy and maize. Based in the city of Porto Alegre, capital of the southernmost Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sul, the company has been in the market for 48 years and employs 9,000 people. The group has 12 industrial units, 17 poultry farms, six incubators and five animal feed factories.

In total, the company has a network of 27,000 producers of milk and 2,800 integrated chicken and pork producers. The group slaughters around 210 million chickens a year and has a yearly turnover of one million tons.

Apart from that, they process 750 million liters of milk per year, used for the production of yoghurt, milk sweet, condensed milk, cream cheese, powdered milk, juices, cheese and butter, among others. In 2005, the group's revenues reached US$ 1.1 billion.

Apart from the Avipal Group, another 22 Brazilian companies and associations are going to participate in Gulfood. This is going to be the first time that three sector organizations participate in the fair in partnership with the Brazilian government – they are the Brazilian Beef Industry and Exporters Association (Abiec), the Brazilian Poultry Exporters Association (Abef) and the Brazilian Fruit Institute (Ibraf).

Gulfood, which is at its 12th edition, is considered the most important business platform for the segment of food, beverages, services and hotel and restaurant equipment in the region.

The fair is turned to producers, suppliers and distributors in the food sector all around the world. Last year, the event received 32,000 visitors from 146 countries.

Service

Gulfood
Date: from February 19 to 22
Site: Dubai International Convention and Exhibition Center
Time: From 11:00 am to 07:00 pm
Site: www.gulfood.com

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