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Whereas Gabriel Feijao pours honey right into a plastic bottle with the assistance of his daughter, his spouse prepares freshly baked loaves of bread from a standard charcoal-fired oven. One other of Gabriel’s kids produces the charcoal a couple of hundred metres away, utilizing tree trunks collected from his land.
Coal, honey, bread and greens are what the household produces for themselves but additionally, to a big extent, to promote on the native market. This subsistence farming is widespread in an unspoilt rural space in central Mozambique, within the district of Sussundenga, Manica province.
The huge expanse of savannah and shrubland is simply interrupted by granite mountains and patches of forest which, when seen up shut, kind intricate geometric patterns: these are the truth is eucalyptus plantations.
“They advised us they needed to supply paper, create a manufacturing unit and lots of different issues. However the manufacturing unit is in Portugal. So it advantages folks there, not right here. We wish meals so we are able to eat. In the event that they take away our land, the place are we going to supply our meals?”
Gabriel Feijao isn’t the one indignant inhabitant of the agricultural group of Cortina-de-Ferro, a two-day drive from the capital, Maputo. 15 years in the past, a Portuguese firm obtained the suitable to make use of the land right here to plant eucalyptus, a tree used completely for the commercial manufacturing of cellulose, from which paper and cardboard is made.
In the intervening time, nonetheless, no cellulose is produced in Mozambique. As a substitute, the logs are despatched to the port of Beira, and from there they’re shipped to Aveiro, Portugal, the place they’re reworked into the uncooked materials wanted to supply bins, high-quality paper, and packaging of every kind, from take-away cups to the packaging for electronics produced and consumed in Europe.
The Portuguese Navigator Firm is almost all shareholder of Portucel Mozambique, whereas the remaining 20% belongs to the IFC (the Worldwide Finance Company, the monetary arm of the World Financial institution).
