Tagua

Cecilia, from USAID Costas y Bosques Sostenibles, invited me to visit a 25-family community out in the mountains to teach recycled art. The community is economically dependent on the harvest of tagua, vegetable ivory, seeds. Here you can see their seed-drying greenhouse. A mountainous pile of 80 giant sacks (value of about $12 per sack) of dried and peeled seeds is waiting for a buyer - these days the market for tagua seems to be grim.