“Here there are only two seasons: when it rains every day and when it rains all day,” Castanho told me the day before. We were in a season of everyday rain, when, like clockwork, it would begin to fall at 3pm. In Belém it’s customary to make plans for before and after the rain, so the next morning Castanho and I get on a boat and cross the Amazon River to Ilha do Combu, one of 39 islands in the municipality of Belém. We can still see the steel towers of the city behind us as the boat enters a narrow river with jungle on both sides. It was a 20-minue ride but it feels as if are hours from any city. We pull up to a wooden dock with stairs leading up to a small house.

Inside the house we meet Dona Nena, who Castanho has been buying chocolate with for years. A few years earlier he met her. Her father, who died there of a snake bite, taught her. She helped him plant, harvest, and process cacao all of her life before he passed away. His father taught him. She’s the only one making chocolate on Combu, not just selling the beans. Her chocolate is rustic and gritty. It’s totally raw, made by grinding the beans and then hand molding it. The wrapper is a banana leaf. She also makes brigadeiros, Cupuaçu jam, and a cacao liquor made from extracting liquid from the beans by placing them in a woven tipiti that’s normally used for processing manioc. She processes about 50 kilos each month, selling to top restaurants in Belém and several organic markets under the label Combu Organico. Everything she makes Castanho now sells at Mercearia Remanso.

Like Elia García de Reátegui of La Patarashca in Tarapoto, Peru and Felipe Schaedler of Banzeiro in Manaus, Castanho’s experiment in building a local network entirely of small Amazonian producers is helping give value to local biodiversity. It’s supporting keeping more of the ecosystem intact than any single product for export can. It creates a local demand for products of high quality from the state of Pará, like Combu Island cacao, Marajó bufala cheese, and various fruits and chiles. When diners see these ingredients being written about in the New York Times and Remanso do Bosque appearing on Best Of lists, they began to realize what they have. Things they may have forgotten or simply overlooked. They then order the ingredients at local at other restaurants and cook them at home. While this may seem like typical farm to table ethos that are found everywhere in the world, in the developing world, particularly in a vulnerable environment, as cheap Chinese products are increasingly entering markets and disrupting local supply chains, it means everything.

Before leaving Belém I went with the brothers Castanho to the town of Sao Caetano de Odivelas, 100 kilometers east of Belém. There are mangroves where herons and the cherry red scarlet ibis are flying about. It’s not far from where the forest meets the ocean.

“People think the Amazon is only river, but this is the Amazon too.”

For the first time, a native Amazonian oyster is being harvest here. A small cooperative of 15 families called ASSOPEF are trying to harvest them sustainably. Before they would just catch anything, whether it was crabs or fish. Now they’re concentrating on long term growth. We get in a wooden boat and paddle out in the river to where the oysters are growing. We crack a few of them open. They aren’t overly briny. They’re a little bit sweet, yet they’re big and meaty.

There’s not a custom of eating oysters in the Amazon, so it’s a challenge. On the beach they’re easy to sell, but in Belém no one knows what to do with them. Remanso do Bosque and a sushi bar in Belém are the first clients. For the project to work they have to find a way to make them familiar enough to the casual diner. They started serving them on Fridays at Remanso do Bosque, just straight on ice, grilled, or fried. On the tasting menu they grill them and serve them with tucupi and jambu, just like a bowl of tacacá.