Paper short abstract:

The agricultural and food systems of the indigenous people of the Rio Negro are particularly complex and diverse, but have recently been subject to changes. In order to preserve the agricultural and food diversity of that region, this agricultural system was registered as intangible heritage.

Paper long abstract:

The presented data are issued from a 12 years research program led by Brazilian and French researchers in collaboration with Amerindian associations. The authors, a botanist and an anthropologist, respectively studied the agricultural and the food system in the middle Rio Negro, a multiethnic region in the Northwest of the Brazilian Amazon, where the main ethnic groups belong to the Arawak and Eastern Tukano linguistic families. The research methods and the results will be presented here. The agricultural system common to these ethnic groups is particularly complex and diverse. About hundred crop species are food plants. Some species include different varieties, cassava being the most diverse crop. In the last years, both the agricultural and the food system have been threatened by urbanisation, globalisation and public policies. The collaboration between local Amerindian associations and the multidisciplinary research team led to the heritagization in 2010 of this agricultural system by the Brazilian Institute of the National Historical and Artistical Heritage (IPHAN). Actions of safeguarding are going on and innovations are taking place.