Once upon a time it was all forest.
And we are hoping one day it will resume its original form. In one generation most of the native mate trees have been uprooted with soya fields encroaching on the few remaining native forests in the region. It takes decades to create a forest and only a fraction of this time to bring it all down. Everything has a humble beginning, the ancient erveiras in the forests where we harvest meta mate were once tiny seeds, that sprouted and over years grew. Similarly we are continuing to take the initial tiny steps in our pilot mate reforestation project in Brasil, taking the first step towards a sustainable mate production system. We recently ploughed the earth to prepare it for the planting of Mate saplings, partially sprouted from seeds that we collected during last year’S harvest and donated in part by ICMEbio along with Arucaria trees that were planted last year to mark the edges of the plot. This permaculture plan includes the planting of native aromatic woods that were traditionally used in Mate production.
We thank all of those contributing to this work and seek the blessings from mate drinkers for the little trees is coming . Thanks to Club-Mate‘s Marcus Loscher, HNE Professor Peter Spathelf, ICMEbio, Professor Philomena, Grupo Creluz, Jeronimo Ceccato, Adriana Cordenonsi and all friends of www.metamate.cc supporting http://metamate.cc/activism-2/ in German at http://www.metamateberlin.de/nachhaltigkeit/mate-wald-garten/
Arucaria Saplings that were donated to the project were planted along the edge of the plot
We were able to save this old Erveira from an infestation from insects
