Participatory enviromental stratification and local soil knowledge in a tradicional afrodescendant comunity in the Mucuri Valley-MG

Abstract

The community of Santa Cruz is one of four tradicional afrodescendants communities in the
municipality of Ouro Verde de Minas, in the Mucuri Valley-MG. Land conflicts and degradation
of soil and water resources threaten the permanence of youth in the countryside and the
maintenance of tradicional afrodescendants culture, including local knowledge systems on
soils and environments, developed and accumulated through generations, which are important
for sustainable planning and management of agroecosystems. In this sense, IFNMG Campus
Teófilo Otoni, since the beginning of 2015, has developed research and extension projects
with the community, aiming to rescue and systematize local knowledge about soils and environments,
through a participatory approach. In this approach the young and older people of
the community were involved in a dialogue of popular with scientific knowledge. At the same
time, this dialogue enable to identify nuances of the local variation of the characteristics of the
environments that allowed to deepen the pedological knowledge and stratify the landscape.