Skip navigation

Indymedia UK is a network of individuals, independent and alternative media activists and organisations, offering grassroots, non-corporate, non-commercial coverage of important social and political issues

Brazil: SEMI-ARID will be a thing of the past?

Emilio José Lemos de Lima | 01.02.2013 18:16 | Ecology | Cambridge

In this process truly poetic rather than scientific, in which consortia of species succeed in building an environment increasingly rich and varied, every plant, every animal, every micro-organism has its contributory role, being the man for the first time in history, leaving his sad protagonist role of stingy tormentor of nature and life and move creatively to assume the coordination of the construction process.
Only he is able to do so. Only he can repair damage to local genetic banks in ways that nature itself can no longer.

Dilma Roussef
Dilma Roussef

Ernst Götsch
Ernst Götsch


The Brazilian semiarid region is one of the largest, most populous and also the wettest in the world. Extends over 964,589.4 km2, covering the north of Minas Gerais and Espirito Santo, the backlands of Bahia, Sergipe, Alagoas, Pernambuco, Paraíba, Rio Grande do Norte, Ceará and Piauí. Live in this region more than 18 million people, 8 million in rural areas. The rainfall is 750 millimeters per year, on average. Under normal conditions, it rains more than 1.000 millimeters. In the worst droughts, rains at least 200 millimeters, enough to provide quality water to a family of five for a year.

But the rain is badly distributed physically and temporally. Due to the characteristics of soil and climate of the region, the Northeast has one of the highest rates of evaporation of Brazil, which makes shallow water tanks useless in times of drought. In addition, water from pits and ponds, where it accumulates downloaded rain, it is usually polluted and filled with worms. This water is responsible for much of diseases of the interior: amebiasis, diarrhea, typhoid, cholera.

People already have tried various solutions to the terrible problem of drought and water scarcity in the region, highlighting the project to build one million (1,000,000) of tanks, and the debatable transposition of the São Francisco River.

Data already somewhat old speak about the construction of 300,000 of the tanks idealized by the people. When it comes to the transposition of San Francisco, the costs are so high, there are so many claims about few people owning the results and so many environmental threats raised, that I will not write about it.

The solution we propose is, at once, very simple, deep and lasting, especially considering that the scientific community aligns the region between those prone to desertification on the planet.

This is the solution proposed and implemented in  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dvv85bE_7HY , documenting in images, beautiful successes in full *Caatinga.

Fundamentally we depend on polyculture or multiculture, contrary to the Fordist trend of mass and monocultural production, which became "traditional", demands the "importation" of various and expensive inputs, contributing to the rapid evaporation of humidity and the impoverishment of life.

Are ARAS, Agroforestry Regenerative Analogues Systems, developed in Brazil by Swiss Ernst Götsch, which are inspired by the natural succession of species.

In perception, acquired in multi-millennial observations and in the best books of biological science, botany and zoological science, that those plants, animals and microorganisms are organized into consortia which succeed each other, always working towards the complexity of fauna and flora living in a certain area, gradually enriching and strengthening the environment, so that it can give support to life forms increasingly developed and larger.

In this process truly poetic rather than scientific, in which consortia of species succeed in building an environment increasingly rich and varied, every plant, every animal, every micro-organism has its contributory role, being the man for the first time in history, leaving his sad protagonist role of stingy tormentor of nature and life and move creatively to assume the coordination of the construction process.

Only he is able to do so. Only he can repair damage to local genetic banks in ways that nature itself can no longer.

The Swiss then proposes, organizes and builds, within this process of natural succession of species, in perfect harmony with it, enriching it with his countless contributions and extracting of it abundance and prosperity, the implementation of ARAS.

You dear reader, friend reader, can see in the mentioned video the inexhaustible variety of species and the high productivity that can be achieved.

Throughout the process disappears the necessity of introducing the classic Fordist agriculture inputs: the live system produces himself the nutrients needed, regardless of chemical fertilizer, all seeds and seedlings can now be obtained locally, are not required the pesticides, pests are controlled by the multiplicity of species that evolve together, there is no monoculture, there is work, activity, harvesting, planting and management throughout the year.

In "General Botany" of the brilliant and world-celebrated German Wilhelm Nultsch, beyond an extraordinary variety of information and knowledge, we found a huge amount of natural substances, and through fast queries by the Internet, I found that many of them integrate sophisticated industrial processes, counting with high commercial value.

The proposition of Ernst Götsch, reasoned and experienced from a technical and scientific perspective, extends to the infinite the possibilities of my proposition of industrialization of cooperatives of small farmers, such as those that, by millions, fight for life in the harsh reality of the Brazilian Semi-arid and that I shall present here timely, so that this article does not get too long.

However, the focus of our article is to expand rainfall numbers at brazilian Semi-Arid, which is the direct result of the implementation of ARAS: as plants, animals and microorganisms get more complex, besides the abundance and the jobs, we obtain more and bigger rains and better moisture retention in the soil and in the vegetation.

Dilma Rousseff works from the perspective of to put Ernst Götsch in contact with hundreds of social movements that, under the acronym ASA led to the design of tanks, so that millions of farmers have access to methodology ARAS, the support of universities and other relevant institutions to the case, and to the modest material means necessary for its implementation.

As the successes you see in the video mentioned above, will multiply, will increase the number of farmers adhering and spreading the "big green spot".

In this step, the semi-arid region will need to change its name, not later than in 12 years.

*Caatinga  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caatinga

Emilio José Lemos de Lima
- e-mail: emiliojoselemosdelima@gmail.com
- Homepage: voltaaomundopresidenta.blogspot.com


Links