Maira Gomez Godinho missed the tourists who used to dock with boats down on the bank.
She had shown them around the village, showed them how the indigenous people of the Tatuyo tribe in the Brazilian Amazon live.
But since the beginning of the pandemic, nobody has come here to the small community on the Rio Negro, around an hour's boat ride from the metropolis of Manaus, which was considered the epicenter of the virus.
Gomez Godinho, 23, wove baskets that no one bought anymore or lay in a hammock in her family's hut.
She was bored.
Finally, she opened the TikTok app on her smartphone.
She called herself Cunhaporanga, which means pretty sister in her language, posted a few videos on which she sang or danced playback, cooked something.
What you do on TikTok.
A couple of people watched.
Not much happened.
It was only this worm that changed her life.
Her parents brought fresh larvae with them from a night walk in the forest.
Cunhaporanga held the thick, yellowish, live worm between her index finger and thumb, then shoved it into her mouth, bit her head off, and chewed.
"Mmmm," she said.
The video made her famous overnight. More than two million people saw it, were shuddered, and wanted to know what the worm tasted like, namely "like coconut". Thousands, sometimes tens of thousands, of new followers were added every hour. Meanwhile, Cunhaporanga, who posts about her everyday life and indigenous diet, has become Brazil’s most successful indigenous influencer, an internet star, with more than six million followers. "I couldn't believe that people were so interested in something so normal," she says and laughs.
What is normal for Cunhaporanga, the consumption of insects, is part of what experts see as the solution to a central human problem: our global food system, which in its current form is dysfunctional and not sustainable. The production and transport of food not only produce around a third of global CO₂ emissions. 90 percent of the deforestation is also done for the benefit of commercial agriculture. This reality is only slowly penetrating the general public's consciousness, says Gernot Laganda, climate chief at the UN World Food Program (WFP). "We finally have to realize that what's on our plates also determines the weather outside the window."
For solutions, experts look not least to indigenous peoples, who often succeed in feeding people in their areas in a sustainable way, i.e. without destroying the ecosystem or biodiversity. "Indigenous peoples have valuable ancestral knowledge that has been passed on from generation to generation," says agricultural economist Yon Fernández de Larrinoa, who heads the Department for Indigenous Peoples at the World Food Organization (FAO). He believes indigenous food systems have revolutionary potential. "We can learn a lot from them."
The production of food is linked to the topic of climate in two ways: it is not only a driver of global warming - it is also particularly hard hit by the climate crisis. This applies not only to commercial agriculture and livestock farming, but also to the food systems of indigenous communities. They suffer from heat and drought, heavy rain and storms. But also under a reduction in animal or fish stocks as a result of environmental pollution from mining or pesticides. This leads to food insecurity. Among the Yanomami tribe, for example, in the middle of the Amazon on the border between Brazil and Venezuela, eight out of ten children under five are now malnourished.
The weather has also changed on the Rio Negro, in the municipality of Tatuyo, say the residents, and the fish are practically boiling in the river water. "The heat is getting more and more intense," says TikToker Cunhaporanga, the plants need a lot more water than before. "Many acai palms have died." The acai berry is part of the traditional diet of the people of the Amazon. In Europe, due to its high content of antioxidants and vitamins, it is now a superfood; in Brazilian cities it is eaten in the form of ice cream.
Cunhaporanga walks past the huts of its neighbors, the walls are made of tree bark, the roofs of palm fronds. She wears a traditional bast skirt. Arms, stomach and face are painted with patterns. The fields of the community lie on the edge of the forest. There they plant cassava, pineapples and tomatoes. Crickets chirp, two colorful arara parrots rest on a branch. The jaguars come at night, sometimes they kill one of the dogs.
A small fire burns next to a hut, above it is a wooden scaffolding on which fish are stewing. "If you are hungry, take one," explains Cunhaporanga. The family eats together in the morning and in the evening. In her videos, Cunhaporanga often shows how she prepares her meals: porridge made from cassava flour and acai, with bananas, fish, fruit juices and sometimes chicken. There is seldom red meat if an animal, such as a capybara, was killed during the hunt.
Instead, insects belong on the Tatuyo menu: ants, crickets and those worms.
"A delicacy," says Cunhaporanga's father Pino Tatuyo, leader of the community, "and pure protein." The larvae, he explains, only exist when a storm knocks over a palm tree.
Then the beetles lay their eggs in the trunk, a kind of natural breeding ensues.
"We don't cut these trees," he says, "we only harvest from them."
Little meat, but proteins from other sources - it is a diet that roughly corresponds to what is considered suitable for feeding mankind in a sustainable and healthy way.
"If we all reduced our meat consumption, it would have an immense impact on the world climate," says Laganda from the World Food Program.
It is "one of the biggest screws we can turn."
After all, chicken or fish are less harmful to the climate than beef. But insects have an even better ecological balance. Therefore, believes Fernández de Larrinoa of the FAO, they will play an important role in the nourishment of future generations. "With a world population of nine billion, which we will probably soon reach, we need healthy proteins that can be produced cheaply and in a climate-friendly manner."
It is a future market that companies like the Paris start-up Ynsect have long since discovered for themselves.
The agricultural scientist Antoine Hubert founded it ten years ago with three colleagues.
Today the company employs around 250 people.
Digital monitors breed mealworms and make mealworm products here
,
in France, the Netherlands and soon in the USA.
You are planning the "largest vertical farm in the world" and also want to expand to Germany and Asia.
"The mealworm contains just as much protein as beef and produces 200 times less greenhouse gas emissions," says Hubert.
The head of Ynsekt used to be an activist and demonstrated earthworms to school classes to educate them about ecological cycles.
Then he realized that he could achieve more as an entrepreneur.
Ynsect has raised around $ 400 million in capital from investors, but Hubert's mission is about more than just making money: he actually wants to make the world a better place.
Together with the University of Maastricht, he had the protein quality examined: the body translates worm protein into muscle mass as well as the best milk protein.
"That is not possible with vegetable proteins," says Hubert.
The mealworm has many advantages: It doesn't take up much space - mealworms love to snuggle up to each other in the dark;
they reproduce quickly and feed on waste left over from the production of grain or vegetable products;
they also make "excellent, natural fertilizers."
In addition, the worms smell and taste neutral.
According to Hubert, who describes himself as a flexitarian and likes to grill a good beef steak every now and then, you can "replace 100 percent" of the meat in ready-made products such as fast-food burgers or sausages.
He doesn't taste any difference.
At his wedding, Hubert had blinies made from mealworms served as an appetizer.
In order to break down the "cultural barriers", that is, to tackle the disgust problem, he wants to invest in marketing and awareness-raising campaigns that are particularly aimed at millennials and younger generations.
A large part of its production, however, has so far been processed into pet food.
But that is also a step in the right direction, says Hubert, because it is much more climate-friendly than feeding cattle, pigs or chickens with soy or fish meal.
It is an approach that FAO expert Fernández de Larrinoa would describe as revolutionary in the best sense of the word: a circular economy that does not generate waste. In indigenous communities, he explains, the concept of rubbish has only been known since it came from outside in the form of plastic bags or batteries. Traditionally, by-products of food production have been processed into packaging or compost. Fernández de Larrinoa believes there are other indigenous behaviors that can be transferred to urban societies: he recommends that city dwellers consume seasonal and regional food, only buy as much as they really need, and share food with other people before they spoil.
Indigenous food systems were based on the spiritual belief that there is life everywhere that deserves respect. When an animal was killed, a ceremony would often take place. But trees and other plants are also seen as living beings. Fernández de Larrinoa considers this indigenous access to the ecosystem to be crucial in order to rethink nutrition and explains this using the example of fishing: While in commercial fishing, for example, masses of fish are taken out of the water that have no market value and are later thrown back dead or mutilated, such a thing does not happen with indigenous peoples. Only what is really needed is fished. One is simply more careful. Also, it is not allowed for many peoples to store food in large quantities,so as not to overwhelm the regenerative capacity of natural resources.
Laganda from the World Food Program is also concerned with the question of how world food can be made more climate-friendly.
For larger farms, his answers are: fewer monocultures, instead diversification in cultivation;
fewer animals grazing on pastures instead of intensive livestock farming with many animals in a small space;
Saving water, energy and fertilizers.
Above all, however, Laganda is concerned with smallholders and the question of how their farms can be made more resilient to climate change.
“There isn't one idea that works everywhere.
Good solutions are usually adapted locally and are more low-tech than high-tech, "says Laganda," a lot of old knowledge is available, but has been lost over time.
We'll help get it out again. "
In the dry Sahel zone, more farmers are again protecting their land from floods and heavy rain with sickle-shaped catch basins. The water seeps down and also helps to raise the groundwater level. In Lebanon, the World Food Program supports traditional fertilization with bark mulch. In the Philippines and Sri Lanka, coastal areas are protected by afforestation with mangrove forests.
"However, the old knowledge reaches its limits where climate change has already reached people's lives," says Laganda.
The weather for smallholders and indigenous peoples is often no longer as predictable as it used to be, and old rules no longer apply.
And this is where modern technology comes into play, for example when predicting extreme weather events.
It is information that farmers need to protect their means of production or animals.
In Bangladesh, the WFP supports the government in relaying extreme weather warnings to remote villages via radio, SMS or announcements in mosques.
When flooding threatens, people at risk are given cash so they can prepare accordingly.
A lot of destruction has already been avoided, which in turn saves costs.
Pino Tatuyo, the father of the TikTokerin Cunhaporanga, is not yet entirely sure how he relates to modern technology.
"This thing eats up a lot of money," he says with a nod in the direction of the antenna mast that brings the Internet to his small village.
He has to pay around 65 euros a month in fees for this, plus an electricity bill of 40 euros.
Nobody in the community has a paid job, especially not since the pandemic, and many indigenous peoples on the Rio Grande have even been dependent on food donations since then.
Tourism is only slowly starting up again.
Pino Tatuyo has already thought about turning off the Internet for his daughter, which plunged her into a deep crisis.
Because Cunhaporanga is famous, but not a bit rich. She shoots three videos a day and broadcasts live. Sometimes the followers give her virtual flowers or diamonds that have a monetary value. She earns a few euros a day, but she doesn't have a steady income. A quiz show invited the family to São Paulo, where they had to estimate the water content in vases in the studio and recognize pop songs by means of dance movements. With the profits they now build a well behind the huts. The internet remains - for the time being.
She is less about money, says Cunhaporanga.
She wants to promote understanding and empathy for her people in a country whose president Jair Bolsonaro described indigenous people as "zoo animals" and would prefer to leave the Amazon rainforest entirely to the economy - last year, as much was cut as it has been in 15 years no longer.
And even if Cunhaporanga's messages are not directly political, she hopes that they can make a difference to the people.
"I'm grateful that you listen to me," she says.
Collaboration: Letícia Bilard
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