by: Francois Franceschini Lajara
The knowledge of how to preserve food allows us to have access to food for ourselves when there is usually none. Preserving food properly extends the shelf life of food, increasing its availability and this is why in adverse circumstances, the only promise of true knowledge is to perpetuate life. It is useless to deny ourselves knowledge because knowing also allows us to participate, add and transform and it is that same knowledge that we give to humanity, empowering wisdom in future generations. This is also an essential issue to achieve a healthy life here and now. It is a deliberate matter for the good of our health and that of those who live with us today. Today, according with the 2021 United Nations Food Waste Index Report 2021, the food waste from households, retail establishments and the food service industry totals 931 million tons each year. Nearly 570 million tons of this waste occurs at the household level. The report also reveals that the global average of 74 kg per capita of food wasted each year is remarkably similar from lower-middle income to high-income countries, suggesting that most countries have room to improve. According to Inger Andersen who is Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations and Executive Director of the United Nations Environment Programme. If food loss and waste were a country, it would be the third biggest source of greenhouse gas emissions. Food waste also burdens waste management systems, exacerbating food insecurity, making it a major contributor to the three planetary crises of climate change, nature and biodiversity loss, and pollution and waste. This is why Sustainable Development program is necessary and invaluable. This fact gives us an idea of how little we know about ourselves and how much knowledge we still must discover and apply. We are on a planet dense with life and ecosystems that invite us to know the essentialities of true knowledge for life and health. In the resources of these ecosystems are the essential molecules for the drugs we use today that are naturally originated. More than one-third of modern medicines are derived directly or indirectly from natural products such as plants, micro-organisms, and animals, and between 60% and 80% of antibiotics and cancer drugs originate from chemical compounds found in ecosystems of the natural world; ecosystems that we must begin to see in a different way, in the totality of the complexity of their opportunities, much more than simply natural and wilderness space. We are now talking about ecosystem services. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization, a UN specialized agency that leads international efforts to eradicate hunger, ecosystem services make human life possible, for ex-ample, by providing nutritious food and clean water; by regulating disease and climate; by supporting crop pollination and soil formation, and by offering recreational, cultural, and spiritual benefits. While these assets are estimated to be worth $125 trillion, they do not receive adequate attention in economic poli-cies and regulations, meaning that not enough is invested in their protection and management. The natural ecosystems are also our primordial pharmacy. In the Amazon, it is estimated that only 60% of the plants with medicinal potential have been studied. Forests, by their very nature, are one of the ecosystems where all the ingredients of the recipe for life are located. So, let’s go to the most complete and rich forest in the world, the Amazon, and then we will see what it offers us, how communities manage re-sources and how there is food security.
The Amazon rainforest is the largest rain-forest ecosystem in the world. The eco-system also includes the drainage basin of the Amazon River. The river itself is more than 4,000 miles long and is the center of the functioning of this great ecosystem. The Amazon rainforest comprises the vast area of 7.4 million square kilometers representing 4.9% of the world’s continental area, covering parts of eight countries: Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, Peru, Suriname, and Venezuela. Along the Amazon River extend numerous towns and cities. In the province and reserve of Loreto is one of them. The Loreto region is home to 11 different native language families, 29 different ethnic groups and 705 Amazonian indigenous communities. According to the United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund UNICEF, the total population of Loreto is home to 1,037,055 inhabitants. Of this total, 413,599 are children and 105,900 are people or indigenous natives of the original peoples of the current Amazon. In the area of Loreto, those born on the border with the jungle are called “Charapa”, which in the native Quechua language is “Chirapa” which means “drizzle in full brightness of the sun”, most likely for its humid and sunny tropical climate. The government of Peru operates the Amazon Research Center IIAP inside the jungle and periodically conducts censuses of human populations born in the region. These interventions help in determining the size of reserves to establish and conserve and monitor the health status of the ecosystem.
The government of Peru has established 43 vast reserves, that is, protected natural areas with the intention of ensuring the best possible balance for biodiversity, natural resources essential for life and humani-ty. The geographical area of Loreto is large, comparable with the geographical area of the current territory of Australia and Germany, its territory being more extensive than that of India, Argentina, Kingdom of Denmark, and Saudi Arabia among others. The meaning of the word Loreto is “place populated by laurels” symbolizing glory, triumph and honor. In this deep Amazonian territory, it is still possible to find resilient peoples such as the Matsé and Shuar indigenous peoples. They live, also perpetuating for themselves, the sustainable economies for life that allowed them to survive for thousands of years, until today, in an ecosystem in balance, as all ancestors of all the current peoples of the world have done. Sustainable economies are those economies derived from the sustainable use of renewable resources while keeping healthy ecosystems in balance. For the original people, there are no so-called wastelands. All the lands of the planet are sacred territories, sacred for the use that nature gives to these lands, nourishing and healing humanity from its beginnings. Thus, the are-as occupied by the men of sustainable economies relate in complete harmony with the pristine areas, in a positive exchange of energy between ecosystems. For thousands of years, people have lived in the deep jungle. Electricity and treated water ser-vices are completely absent in the jungle and intermittently in developing towns such as Jenaro Herrera. The town of Jenaro Herrera has no road or access road, nor does it have any airport. The only access route is by boat through the Amazon River and its tributaries. This town is located in the province of Requena in Loreto, Peru.
Loreto is a department of the Republic of Peru with capital in the city of Iquitos, located in the northeast of the country, in the middle of the Amazon. In Lore-to there are 4 national parks, 2 communal reserves, 4 national reserves, 2 reserved areas and 31 Privately Protected Area (PPA). But then, in such quasi-pristine conditions, how have people handled food for thousands of years without the services and technology we have? Today, in the Amazon rainforest, as thousands of years ago, food preservation processes are carried out in an essentially similar way, by several ancestral processes that today have even greater validity and use, even within the process of globalization of consumption and production economies. In everyday activities such as hunting and fishing, where people penetrate deep into the jungle in periods that can exceed five consecutive days of activity, these processes will obviously be important for the success. To preserve food in the Amazon rainforest safely several techniques are used, some millenary, others more recent. They are mainly acetic acid, smoking, salting and citric acid.
Acetic acid, vinegar: In all probability, vinegar was discovered more than 4,000 years ago, when in an oversight, a Babylonian forgot to close an amphora of wine. In Ancient Greece, it was common to drink a type of liquid called “oxycrat”, which was a mixture of water, honey, and vinegar. Hippoc-rates, the father of medicine, claimed that this drink could also clean wounds, sores and help heal respiratory diseases. The preservative pow-er of vinegar is due to acetic acid, which allows food to be preserved for longer. What is achieved with vinegar as a natural preservative is that the container containing food does not contain oxygen and prevents the generation of fungi and bacteria that can affect the quality of food. The combination airtightness and vinegar make the expiration date of the preserves considerably longer.
The smoking technique: The technique of smoking food is probably one of the oldest, 45-50 thousand years old. Smoking food was born through observation, according to paleontologists and anthropologists, approximately 45-50 thousand years ago, in the caves of Neanderthals and homo sapiens who realized that the meat they hung near their bonfires remained in better conditions for longer. The process of smoking a food is used as a preservative and flavoring. It is an ancient way of preserving food of animal origin. Preserving the product, enhancing the flavor and providing different characteristics are part of the properties of the food smoking process.
The salting technique: Salting is one of the oldest methods of preserving food. It is known that the an-cient Egyptians already began to put meats in salt in order to be able to store them and keep them edible for long periods of time. There is also evidence of similar uses in China in the third millennium BC. The importance of salting made the production and marketing of salt one of the priorities of the different powers since the time of the Roman Empire. A significant fact of this is that the term salary in Castilian, is derived from the Latin salarium, which in turn comes from “salt” and originates from the amount of salt that was given to a worker, in particular to the Roman legionaries, to be able to preserve their food (salarium argentum). The procedure can be used for many products. There is the possibility of salting fruits and vegetables, although it is common to apply the method in the salting of fish and meat. Food salting is a technique that has existed since ancient times, when man discovered that sea salt obtained through solar evaporation could be placed in food to extend its shelf life. For this same reason, sea salt was highly valued and was even used as a method of payment in several civilizations such as the ancient Egyptians, Romans, and Phoenicians.
For millennia, we have lived blindly, following the ideal that having and possessing more is better, and to maintain that ideal, we have entered an unconscious centrifuge of production that exceeds consumption and wears out natural resources to the point that the speed of consumption does not allow the time necessary for natural processes to regenerate the same natural good already consumed, causing instability and chaos. Ecosystems are then regenerating essential resources with great difficulty and in proportion to the development of the already dislocated state of our consciousness. We have all seen pandemics, shortages, famine, extreme weather events and chaos happen to the world. Ecosystems are then regenerating essential resources with great difficulty and in proportion to the development of the already dislocated state of our consciousness. With the passage of time, the past reality manifests itself in the current results and we can see them clearly. The degradation of ecosystems, the prevailing pollution, and the global decline in biodiversity is demonstrating that for the true well-being of man and life, the reward for having and possessing more, has only catalyzed the problem even more. We can say with certainty that we are definitely not following the best path to guarantee life for our very existence. Learning how to preserve food, in addition to being useful and practical in its purpose, can also help us perceive reality through an exercise of self-observation, responsibility and empowerment on the real problems of humanity. In conscience we must learn to acquire only what we need because the rest we have left over from the moment we acquire it. It is as if we are paying to buy problems. We are in a generation of change. This demands that we become aware of ourselves to connect again with life, to reach full-ness and not disappear as a species just because of simple ignorance of our actions. As mentioned at the outset, The global food waste totals 931 million tons each year, from that nearly 570 million tons of this food waste occur at the household level. It is well known that there have always been few, but necessary, people to manifest consciousness, empowered by knowledge for life. It is they who
truly re-form systems, who temper themselves to new conditions and advance. That is what unites us for life, while that generalized idealism of having and possessing more pushes us to follow something that separates us from reality and brings us closer to death. This is a planet of finite resources. We must never forget it because it will cost us our very lives. Now, with the wise understanding of mature man in his convictions and reasoning, these once finite resources for life can today be transformed into resources of infinite availability for the promotion of life. We must transform our habits and the way we see our relationship with the planet and life. We can’t wait for others to do it. We can’t wait to run out of our resources. We can’t wait to run out of life on this planet. So how long do we have to wait for ourselves?