Horticulture improves the standard of living
Papaya cultivation guarantees stable income and gives more comfort to those who before lived of small tasks

" O Estado de São Paulo" newspaper. September 08, 2004.

"I am a rural business man and papaya exporter", says Anisio Zeferino Gomes, the vice-president of the Association Vale do Lírio1. About his old life, he doesn't like to be reminded. Occasionally, he was a carpenter and used to receive a little more than minimum wage a month. "Today, I have an income of more than R$ 700 a month, house, car, mobile phone, credit in the bank and checks ". There are months that Gomes and the other associates receive almost R$ 1.200 . Everyday, he waits for the TV news at night, to know the dollar value, which balances the price of the papaya. "In the association, there are two computers, but we don't have phone lines”, he justifies. We don't have how to access the internet to know the international quotation of the papaya ".

Collective area
The area is collective and the profits are divided equally. The lowest retreats are due to the acquisition of new areas for cultivation and to the investment in inputs to increase the production, in the total of R$ 250 thousand. With the money, they bought the land, made the soil preparation , the irrigation sistem, the fertilization and planting. We "reserved R$ 50 thousand for the crop ". He believes that those resources should generate more of R$ 1 million. Whenever the group invests for the first time in an area, the cost is high, Gomes says, because of the irrigation. The provisioning for irrigation comes from four wells, with 110 thousand liters per hour,that take the water until a reservoir with capacity of 250 thousand liters.

The president of the association, Antonio Vieira, who used to work at the Estiva Plant before, tells how he entered in the project of Incra to get the land. He learned how to take care of it and that the land has to be carefully prepared, with the corrections and the necessary fertilizers, besides having seeds of good quality. The daily handling of the culture is well divided among the group. "Everybody demands and controls the execution of the tasks ", affirms the “assentada” Maria Teluzia, who takes care of the administrative part and of the accounting.

The orchard is irrigated daily, just ceasing when it rains. Three “assentados”, in shifts of eight hours, among them Maria and Gomes, take turns in maintaining the irrigation constant. Every hour, they have to change the key of the equipment to take the water for another area of 3 hectares of papaya. They receive a minimum wage just to control the irrigation.

Equilíbrio
Who arrives to the establishment is surprised with the care related to the environment. Everything was well planned As it was foreseen in the project, strips of vegetation of 50 meters of fields separate each papaya tree area. It is "the protection" area, Vieira says. Each family possesses an area of 1 hectare for subsistence planting. The women are planning to set up a factory of candies using papaya, cashew, sweet potato and milk. We will "also plant squash and sweet potato to export ", Maria says. (B.M.)