The Seed Guardian of Brazil’s Caatinga

This story by O Joio E O Trigo originally appeared on Global Voices on May 31, 2026.

Standing up, hat on his head, glasses on his face, and accordion in his hand, Geraldo Gomes sings one of his original songs: “I live in the middle of the woods, close to Mother Nature, enjoying the fragrance of the flowers… My field is diverse, I plant a little of several varieties…” As he plays, his mother, Dona Rita, dances. 

We are in the family’s living room, in the community of Touro, in the town of Serranópolis de Minas, in the northern part of the state of Minas Gerais. On the walls hang family photos, diplomas, and certificates from the countless courses Geraldo has taken. 

There is also a table covered with jars filled with seeds and bottles with liqueurs he makes using plants grown in his fields. “The liqueur, I make from several plants. From pumpkin, banana, corn, juá de boi, to moringa. There must be about thirty types we make here.” 

Geraldo Gomes is 62 years old and was born in this house, the same place where his mother was born and where his grandmother was married. The son and grandson of farmers, he began going to the fields at seven years old, accompanying his father and grandfather, who always maintained that “a field should be like the forest, it has to have many types of plants.” They planted everything: rice, peanuts, sugarcane, pumpkin, maxixe, corn, beans, broad beans, and more.

One of the family’s practices, part of the sertanejo people’s tradition passed down through generations and kept alive by Geraldo, is saving and exchanging seeds. “We saved them so we would not be dependent. Sometimes, when it was time to buy, you could not find them, and many times, when you did find them, you did not have the money.” 

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If the farmer’s living room draws attention for its richness of detail, his seed house is even more striking. Shelves hold jars and plastic bottles filled with hundreds of seeds in many colors and sizes. Across the floor, even more bottles. And dozens of gourds. He says he has more than 200 varieties of seeds. 

One hundred years of preservation

Geraldo is known and celebrated as an important guardian of heirloom seeds in his region. “A guardian is someone who has several species of many plants, preserves them, and seeks out other varieties that are disappearing. He saves and multiplies them. We have species of seeds that have been planted for more than 100 years. We keep them to show the importance they have had, and the importance they may have for future generations,” he explains. “Today we see that most of these species are disappearing, whether native or cultivated.” 

The family farm is located in the semi-arid Caatinga, where the climate is marked by long periods of drought, food is produced without pesticides, and the seeds are selected and stored. There are seeds for watermelon, pumpkin, cotton, and more than 70 types of beans: white, black, yellow, red, striped, artisanal, and more. There are also seeds for broad beans, okra, maxixe, castor beans, and peanuts. He also keeps seeds of medicinal plants. As for corn, there are countless varieties: white corn, used to make canjica; coruja corn, colorful and fluffy, with a large ear that is good for animals; black crioulo corn; Tupiniquim corn; catingueiro corn; cateto corn.

At the entrance to the seed house, a sign indicates that the initiative is supported by the One Land and Two Waters Program (Programa Uma Terra e Duas Águas) of the Semi-arid Network (Articulação do Semiárido), a coalition that advocates for living harmoniously with nature in the semi-arid region. The Center for Alternative Agriculture of Northern Minas, which promotes agroecology and the rights of traditional peoples and communities in the region, is also one of the organizations supporting Gomes’ work. 

Climate change 

The role of seed guardian began very early in Gomes’ life. At the beginning, there was no dedicated house for the seeds; they were stored in a corn crib. “And every passing year, we have been selecting these seeds. Today, what you find most often on the market are transgenic species,” he laments. He sells his seeds at open-air markets, at seed exchange fairs, or by order. 

His preservation work faces many difficulties. “If you do not have a lot of patience and love for the seeds, you end up giving up. There are few incentives and few people who are interested in this work. And I look at the benefits you can gain from what you plant. It is a guarantee in the face of these difficulties, when there are so many pesticides. Because the entire planting system has changed.” 

Geraldo maintains an agroecological field where he adopts an agroforestry system, or SAF. Walking through his property, he shows us fruit trees — such as tamarind, sugar apple, cashew, and jambolan — and medicinal plants. “It is a way of having everything at the same time: an integrated agroforest for food production and soil fertilization, in addition to preserving the environment.” 

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The diversity of plants and products is undeniable, but the arrival of monoculture farms nearby and the effects of climate change harm production. “When you do not use pesticides but the other person does — when he is spraying, you can smell it in the air. So it harms us. And today they are even using drones to spray pesticides.” The river water is also contaminated, he reports. “We see this with sadness, because before the monoculture of cotton, the river flowed. You might have had little rain, but it still flowed. With the destruction that happened came deforestation. Today, everything is being lost, and climate change is because of exactly that.” 

In the 1970s, livestock, irrigation, and cotton monoculture projects arrived in the region, using agricultural practices promoted by the so-called Green Revolution: hybrid seeds, chemical fertilizers, pesticides, and mechanization. According to Gomes, “it was a period of great destruction… Many native plants were cleared for cotton planting. And people went through a lot of hardship. Because the cotton monoculture was financed by the bank, and people became financially dependent on them/the system. As a result, many lost their land to pay their debts,” he recalls. “There were times when you were in the river, you went to bathe in the afternoon, and you would see that little stream of poison coming down, kind of green, like grease.” 

“And this system that I plant here — many times people would say it was a crazy person’s field, that I must be crazy to use this system,” he says. “But at least I preserved the life of many species. It was because of this craziness. Otherwise, everything might be gone.”

Geraldo’s “crazy field” is essential for preserving the Caatinga. Between 1985 and 2023, the biome lost 14.4 percent, or 8.6 million hectares, of its native vegetation cover, according to the MapBiomas platform. What remains represents 59.6 percent of the biome, or 51.4 million hectares. In almost four decades, the area dedicated to agriculture expanded by 1.8 million hectares. There were 115,000 hectares occupied by the activity in 1985, and in 2023, it reached 1.9 million hectares. Pastures increased the most: 12.1 million hectares, a growth of 112 percent between 1985 and 2023, rising from 10.8 million to 22.9 million hectares. 

Geraldo says he wants to transform the seed house into a seed museum. “Whoever comes always takes the liqueurs. And we reinforce the importance of preserving the importance of family farming.”

[VP]

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