The Serra Catarinense is a mountainous, forested area in the state of Santa Catarina, whose economy has traditionally depended on the use of forest resources and livestock. Human and animal diets in the area have always been based on Araucaria angustifolia, a native tree of Southern Brazil. It is an ancient tree that can reach 40 m in height and lives an average of 200/300 years, extending to as long as 500 years. Though the Serra Catarinense was completely covered with araucaria some centuries ago, for the last few decades the area has been experiencing a systematic replacement of these trees by Canadian pine (Pinus elliottii), which is much more profitable due to high market demand for its timber. It is estimated that no more than 1% of the boundless araucaria forest of southern Brazil now remains. Those buying land and chopping down the araucaria forest pay minimal penalties and are soon more than compensated by the profits from selling Canadian pine timber. The Aparados da Serra and Iguaçu National Parks have areas set side for araucaria, but their area does not exceed 3000 hectares.
The araucaria pine nut, or pinhão, is the seed of Araucaria angustifolia. It is about 4 cm long, elongated and ivory in color, covered in a tough skin and held in large cones. Historic research and archeological finds show that the Kaingang and Xokleng natives lived from hunting and gathering pine nuts. The fruit was also an essential nutrient over many centuries for other indigenous peoples, as well as Italian and German settlers who came to this area.
Always considered a poor person’s food - mata fome (“hunger killer”) - it is included in many traditional dishes, but its value has never been officially recognized at a national level. It is normally boiled for use in a range of different preparations or cooked directly on the stove in gatherers’ houses. The two traditional recipes based on the nuts are paçoca de pinhão (boiled and sliced pine nuts mixed with minced meat) and entrevero (a panful of vegetables and cured meat with pine nuts). Indigenous peoples used to traditionally eat them in sapecada: the nuts would be covered with araucaria leaves and placed on a fire, the roasted nuts were then peeled and eaten in the forest.


The Presidium
Most of the gatherers of araucaria nuts in the Serrana Region are members of the Ecoserra Cooperative, an organization Promoting sustainable gathering and defense of the ecosystem, preserving the araucaria forests and helping producers to obtain better earnings.
The Slow Food Foundation will collaborate with Ecoserra in order to defend the traditional ecosystem through public awareness campaigns, so consumption of araucaria nuts can be reconsidered and the importance of the trees highlighted. At the same time a pilot project will be developed involving processing of pine nuts with the Grupo Ecológico Renascer de Urubici (an association of gatherers and processors created in 1996 and linked to Ecoserra). The Slow Food Foundation will support the producers in setting up a workshop and producing traditional transformed products based on araucaria nuts to be promoted on the local and the national market.
It is a small project which could be replicated in other centers of the Serra Catarinense.

Production area
Municipalities of Urubici and Lages, Santa Catarina

Presidium supported by
Veneto Regional Authority

With the Patronage of
Brazilian Ministry of Agricultural Development