Carlos Thays, the director of the Jardín Botanico of Buenos Aires, was one of the first to figure out how to germinate yerba mate seeds. He then planted yerba mate in the Jardín Botanico in the first years of the 20th century. In 2010 yerba mate was again planted in the same place in the Jardín Botanico of Buenos Aires.
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There are many Ilex but only Ilex Paraguarensis can be called yerba mate. Ilex Dumosa is very similar to Ilex Paraguarensis but it has much less caffeine. Las Marías sells Unión Relax with Yerba Mate as a way to drink mate but with much less caffeine.
I got to see the mechanized harvest of yerba. These machines are gigantic and fast. They harvest a tremendous amount of yerba very quickly. Logistics (having enough trucks to transport the yerba to the secadero, planning the route of each harvester so they don't collide, etc.) become important. At this time, I believe that only 3 companies have fully mechanized harvesters. By far, most yerba is harvested manually. Semi-mechanized harvesting is another option (mechanized scissors and a machine for chopping the branches) that is accessible for small producers but I didn't have the opportunity to see it in action. This yerba producer specially selects seeds and plants cloned yerba. The plantation on the left side of the road has plants that are all "brothers and sisters" - they are from the same parent plants. The plantation on the right side of the road has all cloned plants.
These are old yerba mate trees. There are some indications that they might have been planted by the Jesuits during the Spanish colonial era.
A yerba producer generously allowed me to see some of the yerba harvest. Here are photos of the manual labor of harvesting yerba. Much of the process is the same as the harvest that I saw in January and wrote about on a January 27, 2016 entry. Most of my photos here only document the differences that I saw at this harvest. This cart is a simple and relatively inexpensive innovation that is very helpful for the tareferos' backs. The bundles of yerba are very heavy! For the other harvest that I saw, each tarefero carried his bundles of yerba on his back. At the previous harvest, the bundles frequently weighed around 80 kilos (over 160 pounds). At this harvest, I was told that the company only paid the tareferos for bundles that weighed no more than 55 kilos. They refused to pay for more than 55 kilos as a method for limiting the weight that the tareferos transported. The man on the left records the weight of each bundle. At the other harvest, all of the workers immediately started smoking when it was time to weigh the bundles and put the yerba in the truck. The man recording the weight did so with a cigarette in his mouth. Here, the company forbids smoking in the yerbales; people have to smoke at the camp spot where they eat. A yerba mate company generously invited me to see their secadero. This is the first step in processing the yerba mate. Within 24 hours of harvest, the leaves need to be toasted to remove most of the moisture. |
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