Afro-diasporic ethnobotany: Food plants and food sovereignty of Quilombos in Brazil

Abstract

Background: Traditional territories can safeguard a great diversity of food plants through local practices that can contribute to the food security of these traditional people. Urbanization can affect food biodiversity and agrobiodiversity by reducing cultivation areas, providing other labor and employment alternatives, and due to other combined effects. The remaining Quilombo populations are groups of traditional people with African ancestry in Brazil, and several Quilombolas groups have their food sovereignty dependent on local agrobiodiversity.

Methods: Through a bibliographic review, we described the richness of food plant resources reported by remaining Quilombo communities, verifying the importance and potential use of plants, both native and exotic, for Quilombola sovereignty from the north to the south of the country.

Results: We selected 24 publications from 1,189 articles, which covered 39 Quilombola communities, with a concentration of research efforts in the Atlantic Forest and Cerrado. A total of 234 plants were registered, and despite their similarities, these communities have specificities in their knowledge of food plants, especially the native ones.

Conclusions: The sovereignty of the Quilombola people goes through the recognition of their ways of life in different biomes and contexts of socio-biodiversity.

Keywords: Afro-Brazilian territoriality; food security; biodiversity conservation.