Growing Bananas in Brazil’s “Forest”

I. A Journey That Began with Bananas

It is much the same with my work on this agroforestry farm in Brazil: in this densely planted system of intercropped crops, one must not only understand the plants themselves but also develop a deep sense of where each kind of plant sits within the whole ecosystem. Understanding how plants change over time has added a great deal of joy to my work, and I find myself immersed in wonder at nature.

My interest in agroecology stems from two things. One is that it touches on questions I explored while studying philosophy as a postgraduate — colonialism, capitalism, ways of living, and the meaning of life. The other is that agroecology satisfies me on a practical level, guaranteeing plenty of exercise and a healthy diet. After nearly a year travelling through farms in Kenya, Tanzania, South Africa, and Brazil, I have now arrived in Yunnan, eager to put what I have learned into practice here, on Chinese soil.

II. A Banana Plantation Becoming a Forest

Louis is my second farm host in Brazil. His farm sits in a small village on the edge of the Atlantic Forest in Paraná, southern Brazil — a stretch of tropical rainforest in the southeast, near the borders with Argentina and Uruguay. It is the most species-rich region on earth, yet its ecology has been badly damaged by the large-scale monocultures of colonial history. Having inherited this century-old farm from his grandfather, Louis spent sixteen years gradually transforming what had once been a banana plantation into an agroforestry farm. Bananas naturally became the keystone crop here.

The agroforestry system he practises is formally called Syntropic Agroforestry — an ecologically restorative mixed-cropping method that mimics the succession of a natural forest through multi-layered planting. Such traditional planting wisdom exists in many regions, from Indigenous communities across the Americas to southwestern China. Over the past few decades, scientists have begun to explore this traditional model, which runs counter to the logic of industrial agriculture yet proves both ecologically sound and abundantly productive, and have set about validating and refining the method on scientific grounds. Their work has inspired many farmers to change course.

On the morning after I arrived at Louis’s farm, we strapped our machetes to our belts, loaded the tools into a wheelbarrow, and set off deep into the forest to work.

Although the word “farm” naturally conjures images of vast monocultures of wheat, maize, and the like, the scene here is entirely different. Past the log cabin Louis spent seven years building, fantastical plants crowd the entrance, and century-old trees line the path on either side. Tropical undergrowth presses in on both sides, clear streams rush and babble, and birds, blossoms, and butterflies dart in and out, seemingly guiding us playfully along the way.

Reaching the entrance to the first planting area, the view suddenly opens up. Enormous banana leaves and a jumble of tropical plants fill my sight; dew-soaked wild grass swamps past my calves, and countless midges hang in the humid air. I feel wholly wrapped in the green of this rainforest.

It was the first time I had truly seen a mature agroforestry system for what it is. Among the banana trees, each over three metres tall, cacao seedlings stand knee-high; turmeric and taro reach waist height; and Mexican sunflower plants tower up to my head.

The broad banana leaves provide shade for cacao and coffee, while pruned leaves and trunks serve as ground cover, suppressing weeds, holding moisture in the soil, and returning nutrients to the topsoil. Turmeric repels pests, and its leaves, together with those of taro, insulate the soil and help it retain warmth and moisture. Mexican sunflower is a common “service plant”: chopped and dropped to become green manure, supplying nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium.

The farm also has planting zones at sixteen-year, ten-year, five-year, three-year, one-year, and just-a-few-months stages, growing coffee, avocado, papaya, tangerine, cajamanga (Pineapple Guava) and other crops … I feel so fortunate to be able to see a farm at every stage of its agroforestry journey in one place. The earliest stage is essentially a mixed vegetable garden — what Portuguese calls horta. The three- and five-year banana groves already left me awestruck, but the groves of ten years or more — unless you look closely at the rows of fruit trees threaded between them (in Portuguese, __canteiro__) — barely look like a cultivated woodland at all.

When it rains, you can spot five or six different-coloured birds sheltering under a single coffee tree. This native flora and fauna — marmosets, frogs, lizards, countless wild birds, bees, butterflies … — together form a richly complex ecosystem that assists with pollination, repels pests, and enriches the soil through its droppings, making the vegetation healthier and more resilient.

Louis told me, when you are walking through an agroforestry farm, your eyes and hands are always on the lookout, on standby.

First comes clearing the banana leaves. For leaves that have already yellowed, we hack them off along the leaf stem, then cut away the leaf blades on either side of the midrib and chop them up; but leaves that have already drooped, rotted, and gone soft are almost impossible to hack off — you have to cut them patiently and carefully, or else the rotting sap will splash from the soggy leaf stalk and leave brown stains on your clothes that will never wash out.

Apart from the leaves, the whole pseudostem of the banana plant is also cut down entirely. In fact, the banana is a herbaceous plant: the “trunk” of every banana “tree” we see is really just layer after layer of tightly clasped leaf sheaths — a pseudostem. After the bananas are harvested, that plant will never fruit again. So at harvest time we fell the whole thing to use as mulch and green manure.

It is a job that demands technique as well as physical strength. To “fell” a banana plant, you first have to control the direction in which it goes down, so it does not crush the surrounding plants. Louis showed me how to cut a triangular notch into the middle section of the pseudostem; then, by pushing on the upper half, the whole stalk tips slowly and naturally towards the gap, while the bunches of bananas hanging on the plant do not slam straight into the ground.

Once the pseudostem is down, we cut off the yellowed, ripe fruit to eat, leaving the still-green bananas in place. The flower at the end of the bunch — while still attached — is a nectar source for hummingbirds; once cut, it becomes an ingredient in Brazilian stews.

Dealing with the lower half of the pseudostem is the hardest part of the task: the cut must be made as close to the base as possible, to ensure no new suckers will sprout from the wound, and the cut surface should be shaped into a bowl as neatly as you can manage. This allows water to collect in the “bottom of the bowl”, preventing stem borers from boring into the corm and infecting neighbouring plants. We watched Louis demonstrate the technique — first driving the machete straight down into the centre of the pseudostem from the front, then slicing diagonally up to the left and up to the right at forty-five degrees, repeating the same cuts from the back, before pushing the stalk over. The cut surface naturally forms a bowl shape.

The leaves and pseudostem sections cut away make excellent ground cover: they suppress weeds and break down quickly, returning nutrients to the soil. Sometimes a pseudostem is too thick to use as one piece, so after felling it we split it in half down the middle. This way, when laid down as mulch, it decays faster and is less likely to roll over and crush young saplings.

The other volunteers and I handled the machetes with extreme care, terrified of accidentally injuring ourselves — first planting the blade into the centre of the cross-section, then gripping the handle with one hand and pressing the tip down with a foot, sliding the blade along to split the stalk. We were a little clumsy at it. Louis, by contrast, worked like a seasoned warrior, landing several strikes in succession, each one precisely on the midline of the pseudostem, splitting it cleanly in two.

Finally, to ensure the bananas grow healthily and have access to enough nutrients, we also need to remove “excess” suckers — this is called thinning. Banana suckers usually grow together as a “family”, sharing a single corm, which is the plant’s true stem. Although the banana’s life cycle from sprouting to harvest is roughly a year, new shoots push up from the sides of the corm almost every six months. Brazilians affectionately call this shared corm the “cradle” (berço) and name the suckers growing from it in order of birth: “grandfather”, “father”, “son”, “grandson” … When thinning, we pick the strongest survivor from each generation within a “family” and cut out the weaker ones.

This is one of my favourite tasks. Unlike the other repetitive physical work, every round of thinning demands a concrete understanding of each plant’s living state. Is this sucker well rooted? Are its leaves upright and strong? Can it get enough sunlight where it stands? Once mature, will it be easy to harvest and to remove? Is it sheltering a shade-loving plant, or stealing another plant’s light? This kind of work requires you to draw on every sense and your mind in full; in a way, it also asks you to put yourself in the plant’s shoes. Plants cannot speak, but in the tending of pruning and thinning, I feel I am communicating with them in a more direct and delicate way. I feel a sense of kinship.

In a setting this rich with biodiversity, once you have grown to understand the lives around you and the relationships between them, I feel more keenly that “I” am part of nature — carrying a role within this environment, not unlike that of a bee — rather than existing as a master who commands and drives the other living things.

IV. I Never Knew There Were So Many Bananas

Raising seedlings, enriching the soil, and managing the understory all demand an enormous amount of work. A harvest heavy with fruit is the trees’ finest reward for the farmer’s toil.

In this stretch of Louis’s woodland, bananas hang plump and full on the bunches, heavy enough to seem as if they could hardly wait to tumble from the stalks.

Animals are always swifter than humans to catch the scent of ripe fruit. Some peeled bananas have already been claimed by marmosets, birds, and tiny insects long before we get there. Sharing the harvest with the animals is simply part of farm life — it is their “wages” for contributing to the woodland’s ecology.

I have begun to fall in love with this fruit. Louis’s banana grove is home to around twenty varieties. My two favourites are the golden banana (Ouro), short and stubby, its sweetness illuminating the mouth slowly like a soft fluorescent glow; and the silver banana (Prata), elongated and smooth, releasing a distinctive tart, floral aroma as it slides down the throat, its layers of flavour unfolding like a walk through a winding tunnel.

Then there is the apple banana (Maçã), the dwarf banana (Nancia), Banana da Terra, and many more — and each variety can be further split into smaller subtypes. It is said that, counting every sub-variety, there are over a thousand types of banana in the world!

“Banana da Terra” serves as a staple food in Africa and Brazil. The Banana da Terra I spotted in a Kenyan supermarket was as long as a child’s forearm. If you thought you had stumbled upon a bargain and bitten into one straight, skin and all, your expression would likely have been as sour as mine was at that moment. Unlike the common dessert banana, this crop — called matoke in Swahili — is a staple in East Africa, boiled or stewed, with a starchy taste much like potato.

In Brazil, “Banana da Terra”, while still slightly astringent — a bit like chewing plain flour — carries more sweetness. It is typically pan-fried in butter and dusted with Farofa (a toasted cassava flour widely used across Brazil), served for breakfast or as a sweet course after a meal. At Louis’s farm, bananas are also processed into a convenient, store-friendly canned sugar syrup — called banamel, a banana honey — to spread on bread or stir into water. Elsewhere, bananas are made into fruit paste, dried fruit, and wine.

Beyond their rich, sweet flavour, they offer a fresh perspective: the cultivated bananas that humans first bred by hybridising wild banana (Musa) plants are now feeding an estimated 500 million people.

V. Next Stop: Yunnan

From eating them to growing them, bananas have ceased to be just a familiar commodity to me. I have started to pay attention to their varieties, origins, growing conditions, and how they are eaten. Likewise, coffee, cacao, avocado, açaí, and other “imported goods” that have crossed oceans suddenly became tangible, living things before my eyes on farms in Africa and Brazil, bound to the land that bore them and the people who tend it. This makes me reflect: what history, what journey, has each flower, fruit, and vegetable in our daily lives traversed before it reaches my table?

Carrying these reflections, along with everything gathered from a year-long agroecology journey through Africa and Brazil, I have just returned to Yunnan. I plan to bring together more young people to work side by side on agroecology, eco-friendly building, and nature communication.

Foodthink author

Zhang Zhiwei

Focusing on Global South smallholder practices, climate change, and youth action. Currently learning and practising Agroforestry.

 

 

 

Unless otherwise noted, all images in this article are provided by the author.

Edited by: Pei Dan