Jungle Farming and Foods

Amazon native women working the fields. 
Modern jungle natives still use traditional
 methods for planting and harvesting crops!

       While the Amazonian native hunter is off in the deep, dense jungle of South America in search of game, his wife is in the fields. His day might seem more adventurous than hers as he treks out into the wilds on a journey where anything could happen. The woman probably has a monotonous day as she works hard, digging, sowing, and harvesting in the hot sun. But for the man there is constant danger from wild animals and disappointment when hunting is poor.

       It is always possible that the hunter will come home empty-handed. And so it is the daily toil of the women in the fields that assures the family of daily food. The farming is left entirely to the women except for clearing the land, which the men do by cutting down the small trees and burning the large ones.

       A jungle farm is not so orderly as we are accustomed to seeing. The native's wooden farming tools are crude and cannot take care of the uneven and broken ground and the fast-growing weeds. But in spite of all these difficulties the women manage to harvest pumpkins, sweet potatoes, yams, corn, coca, tobacco, and cassava, the most important crop of all. There is no special harvest season. The crops grow and ripen all year around in this land where there is no winter.

       We call bread the ''staff of life" because it is our most important food. And so it is to the jungle Indian, too‚ bread made from the cassava plant. However, most of the varieties of cassava are poisonous, and so the women must make the cassava fit for eating. They gather the roots from the field and carry them in baskets to the river. There the women wash them, peel them with a knife or with the teeth, and wash them again.

       After the roots are taken home, each one is split into about three or four pieces and put in a bowl near the fire to soak for about twenty-four hours. Then the cassava is mashed and grated and put into a squeezer made of woven splints, where the poisonous juice is pressed out. What is left is meal, which is sifted and dried. This meal, which looks like sawdust, is often eaten just as it is. To make bread, the meal is kneaded with water, put into a pan, and cooked over a fire. Cassava bread looks and tastes like a dry, stale pancake. The poisonous cassava juice is saved and, after it has been heated to drive off the poison, it is used as a flavoring for stews.

       In addition to meat from jungle animals and cassava bread, vegetables are eaten. They are boiled and pounded and seasoning is added‚ not salt, for that is scarce, but fish, frogs, worms, ants, or peppers. This might make the main meal, which is eaten in the evening.

       The morning meal is light and might consist of cold cassava bread and meat left over from the meal of the night before. A hunter, particularly, never eats much in the morning, and if he should get hungry during the day he can try to find fruit to eat. Food is not so plentiful in the jungle as you might think. He may not eat much, but the jungle hunter drinks a lot‚ a kind of tea in the morning and, later in the day, water, fruit drinks, and a beverage made from the roots of the cassava plant.

       The woman is both the farmer and the cook. She cooks by putting the earthenware pot right on the fire logs. She covers the pot with a single leaf, stirring the food occasionally with any stick that is handy. When the food is cooked, the Amazon natives eat right away. The hot-pot is always ready, kept warm over a constant fire, and an eating routines are dictated by hunger only. Buchwald.

Read more about the jungle:

• The Jungle
• Jungle Animals
• People Who Live in The Jungle
• The Jungle "Maloca"
• The Jungle Hunt
• Jungle Medicine Past and Future 
• The Jungle Dance 
• Jungle Crafts

 Native farmers and gatherers sell foods to upscale

restaurants in Ecuador.