A extraordinária história de vida de Ana Maria Primavesi¹

abstract

This article seeks to trace the steps of Ana Maria Primavesi from her graduation at the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences (BOKU) in Vienna, to her the (unique) understanding of the complexity of soil life, and how this living organism contributes to agricultural development. It follows the path of her childhood and academic formation in the midst of World War II, and the difficulties she faced to continue her studies. At BOKU, fortuitously, Ana gets to know the work of Johannes Görbing, a pharmacist and an enthusiast of chemistry and botany, who became one of her greatest mentors. After the war, Ana and her husband Artur Primavesi emigrated to Brazil, where they revolutionized tropical agriculture by advocating an ecological management of the soil and insisting that the ecological treatment of the soil must obey the conditions of each place (eco = place). Ana Primavesi laid the first foundations of what agronomy would call agroecology, an agricultural practice that mimics nature and does not exploit the soil to its limit, but rather rewards all the abundance it provides.

keywords:
Agriculture; Biology; Agroecology; Soils; War; Agronomy