Farmers in Brazil’s Cerrado cotton on to the benefits of agroecology

The News Craving

“I was born in the country, at home — not in a hospital,” Gaspar Gonçalves do Amaral says proudly. For Amaral, home is the municipality of Arinos in Brazil’s Minas Gerais state, part of the Cerrado grassland that’s watered by the Urucuia and Paracatu rivers. Back then, Amaral says, growing cotton was the main source of income for his family in this farming community: his grandfather worked the fields, and his grandmother was a weaver. Amaral was one of the first people in the region to turn to agroecology after the farmed passed into his hands. Agroecology is a sustainable farming approach tha…

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