Extension Highlights

Cultivating the tastes of Brazil (in Massachusetts)

Silvia Moreira and Maria Da Mota - Photo: Nancy Palmieri

There‘s a taste of Brazil in Massachusetts . . . in Boston, Whately and Dracut, where you will find crops like jiló, maxixe, couve and quiabo . . . in Framingham and Hyannis, where Brazilian markets offer new opportunities for the distribution of Brazilian crops . . . and in restaurants in Cambridge and elsewhere where those crops go into increasingly popular Brazilian dishes.

Bringing it all together are 250,000 MassachusettsBrasileiros – along with the UMass Extension team that is attempting to meet their nutritional needs and to boost the profitability of the state’s farms.

Professor Frank Mangan of UMass Extension’s Vegetable Team and the UMass Amherst Department of Plant, Insect and Soil Sciences had spent years researching the cultivation and marketing of a variety of “ethnic vegetables” when he had a chance to import some jiló (gee-LO) seeds in 2001. He had heard about the small, slightly bitter eggplant from his Portuguese teacher. Since then, he has visited Brazil, learned more Portuguese, honed his taste for things Brazilian, and sparked a new interest in Brazilian crops around the state.

Frank recruited Maria Moreira of Lancaster, a native of the Azores, and her sister-in-law, Silvia Moreira of Lowell, who hails from Brazil. Residents from Brazil, the Azores, the Cape Verde Islands and Portugal have made Portuguese the second language of Massachusetts, notes Silvia Moreira.

“Silvia and Maria are key to this project,” says Mangan. “Silvia knows the Brazilian community, and what it wants. Farmers have to be able to get crops to people who want them, and without community support, this won’t work.”

At the 130-acre Allandale Farm, the only working farm in Boston, manager John Lee agreed three years ago to grow some of the jiló seedlings that Frank had started at the UMass Amherst Research Station in South Deerfield. He quickly discovered that jiló grew well and was easy to pick.

Frank Mangan consults with
farmer Dave DeWitt.
Photo: Nancy Palmieri

“Jiló does well in dry soil, and we think it will be great in rotation,” says Lee, who also grows couve (CO-vey, a variety of collard), maxixe (ma-SHE-shee, a cucumber), quiabo (kee-A-bo, okra) and three varieties of Brazilian squash. Even more important, Lee found that jiló sold well at several times the 50-cents per pound wholesale price of eggplant.

“Success means doing something that other people haven’t figured out yet,” says Lee. “It’s the way to save the farm. This is the year of jiló. It’s our first big wholesale crop.”

João Araujo and Maria Da Mota are crucial to that success. The couple owns four Brazilian markets in Massachusetts and a wholesale distributor for 150 other markets and restaurants. Frank Mangan introduced João to John Lee and helped initiate a promising agreement to distribute Allandale’s jiló crop.

“We’ve been getting jiló from Florida. But it’s already yellow and costs $6.50 per pound,” says Da Mota. “Our customers want it green, and they want it fresh.” Harvest Farm in Whately is hoping to forge a similar agreement with a New Jersey supermarket chain.

It’s really exciting to be able to identify an opportunity and get Massachusetts farmers in at the beginning,” says Frank Mangan.

Frank and his team already are looking ahead. Frank wants to explore the local potential for preserving and packaging jiló, and he is hoping to win federal and state support to explore new trade opportunities between Massachusetts and Brazil.