The underground nut

Aráquide, caranga, carango, jiguba, jinguba, mandubi, mandobi, manobi, amendubi, amendo, mepinda, mancarra, manobi, mindubim and amendoim… lots of names for a nut that comes originally from South America and is cultivated by 45-year-old António Rosa in Maria Vinagre, a small village near Aljezur in the Southwest Alentejo and Vicentina Coast Natural Park. His four hectares of agricultural land are certified. There, in the sandy soil, he cultivates the peanuts or groundnuts, unique in Portugal and Europe. His agricultural product, known as Alcagoita, is processed into the finest peanut butter. The whole process, from cultivation to processing to selling of the organically grown product, is traditional and sustainable.

While the majority of Portuguese farmers apply for subsidies for major projects and monocultures, António Rosa stressed to ECO123 that he was looking for a niche product to grow at the same time as sweet potatoes, grapes and green beans, and had found peanuts. In Portugal, he is out on his own. After harvesting, drying and roasting just over 2,000 kilos, around Christmas time he processes the nuts by grinding them finely into an even finer spread, which customers can buy at health food shops such as the Mercearia Bio (Portimão) or Brio and BioCoop (Lisbon, Porto).

The peanut plant, he tells us, is a tropical pulse closely related to the orchid, whose yellow flowers still grow on the surface in the summer but then later in the autumn grow into the ripe fruit ten centimetres underground. “I always wanted to be a camponês,” António Rosa says, “There’s always plenty of work, and you’re happy with it, you can make ends meet and lead a calm life with no stress.”

About the author

Uwe Heitkamp, 53 years old, started working after university in daily newspapers and from 1984 on in public tv broadcasting companies such as WDR (Collogne), NDR (Hamburg), SDR (Stuttgart/Baden-Baden) in the ARD (first programme), wrote several books and directed the cinema movie about the anti nuclear movement in Germany in 1986 (Wackersdorf). After emigration in 1990 he founded 1995 the trilingual weekly printed newspaper “Algarve123” and later the online edition www.algarve123.com. Heitkamp lives for 25 year in Monchique, Portugal. He loves mountain hiking and swimming in streams and lakes, writes and tells stories of success from people and their sustainable relationship between ecology and economy. His actual film “Revolutionary Roads” tells the 60 minute story of a long walk crossing Portugal. 10 rural people paint a picture of their lives in the hills of the serra and the hinterland. The film captures profound impressions of natural beauty and human life. Along which path is the future of Portugal to be found? (subscribe to ECO123 und watch the documentary in the Mediatec)