Portugal

Twenty steps lead up to the second floor of the sandstone stronghold that stands behind metre-thick walls. That’s where the five guest cells of the Catalonian Cistercian monastery Poblet are to be found. Brother Paco, aged 79, alias Francisco Martínez Soria, hands me the key. He shows me the bathroom, broom cupboard and the wall-walk around the monastery. He’s a man of few words: “Singing at one, followed by lunch.” Then he leaves. Bed, desk, chair, shelf, rubbish bin, saint’s image, radiator, desk lamp. Four by two-and-a-half metres. This is where the three-day, 106 km long walk along the Cistercian …

Cardinal Peter Turkson grew up in simple circumstances in Ghana. Today he is one of the most influential men in the Vatican. In an interview with ECO123 he calls on Europe’s crisis states to reduce their demands. Pope Francis criticises an “invisible tyranny of the markets” and speaks of a “new dance around the golden calf”. Isn’t that a bit exaggerated? He is my superior, how could I contradict him? (laughs) But seriously: of course the Pope is right. We’ve been living with the financial crisis since 2008, and there is no sign of it disappearing soon. Rather, one nation …

ECO123 spoke to the inventor of a completely new method of producing recycled paper, the biologist Dr. Philipp Althöfer (47). He studied natural sciences at the universities of Düsseldorf, Bonn and Cologne. The topic for his diploma thesis was: Biotechnical treatment of process-water using the example of a paper factory processing scrap paper in a large city. And his 2001 doctoral thesis: Softening and re-use of biologically treated circulation water from paper manufacture. Althöfer is a lecturer at the University of Cologne, teaching the course “Biological Cleaning of Wastewater”. Just before this edition went to press, Althöfer showed ECO123 the …

Organic agriculture is not a recent phenomenon and proof of this is that Agrobio, the Portuguese Organic Agriculture Association, has been running for 28 years. According to its president, Jaime Ferreira, the number of people involved in this field has increased, but the total is small. More and more consumers are interested but they have difficulty finding the products easily. The Algarve has some 3,000 hectares of land certificated for organic farming, with vegetables, fruit and some vineyards close to the coast accounting for quite a small share as compared with pasture and olive groves in the uplands of the …

“We are what we eat” – but this raises an important question. There’s no time any more to seek out what is best, and people shop in hypermarkets as a matter of convenience. This is what lay behind Pedro Gonçalves’s business idea, which he called “Mercearia Bio” (the organic grocery). This is a concept based on an online shop, where you can look and order from the comfort of your home, but it also focuses on proximity between producer, distributor and consumer. All of this means that you can be just one click away from having certificated organic produce delivered …

On 6th May, the European Parliament approved the law (1) which defines the prohibition of seed swapping, with the exception of private individuals and companies with fewer than ten In Portugal, the initiative has not been well received by everyone. The “Seed Sovereignty Campaign” aims to alert not only farmers but also the general public to the implications of this law which aims to patent seeds. Lanka Horstink is the coordinator of this movement, part of the environmental organisation GAIA, one of the fifty associations which recently went to Brussels to demand the right to sow, swap and reproduce seeds …

If there is one person who takes the maxim “think globally, act locally” literally, it is Tom Bauer, founder member of the NGO Surfing The Nations (STN). Based in Hawaii and founded in 1997, STN allowed Tom to combine his two passions: surfing and humanitarian work. The aim is to counteract the idea that surfing is something done by egomaniacs obsessed with personal fulfilment. But also to motivate practitioners to go out of their comfort zone and provide hope and change for local people who are in need of both of these things. But exactly how can surfing contribute to …

At present, when people think about rice, it is not often in its whole-grain form. However, since the beginnings of agriculture it was whole-grain cereals that traditionally formed the basis of human nutrition. It was only when the rate and patterns of consumption changed that the factor of convenience forced a change in eating habits, with refined foodstuffs regularly being used. Whole-grain rice is one of the most complete and balanced foodstuffs, promoting the stability of insulin and glucose levels in the blood. The fibre it contains can also contribute to the lowering of cholesterol (1) and the risk of …

One the last places you think of when people talk about natural foods is Lisbon. Or maybe not, depending on what you include under that heading. For Rui Rato, owner of the restaurant Tao, natural foods imply not only foodstuffs in their unrefined form, but also a harmonious combination of each ingredient, taking into account the effect of the whole on body, mind and spirit of each individual. It is exactly with this in mind that each client puts together their own dish, which is what you’d expect in a restaurant whose name is derived from Taoism. In this Chinese …

Despite the difficulties, there are many Guineans – both residents and emigrants, in which Portugal plays an important part – who are looking for ways to improve the country, trying to reverse the trend towards political, military and economic fragility. To this end, a group of Guinean women resident in Portugal decided to join forces drawing on the experience of Filomena Djassi. She is a woman with well-founded ideas, and, despite her youth, she is already taking on a leadership role. After a training course with a group of women in Lisbon, she spoke to ECO123. ECO123: Who is Filomena …