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Two thousand years ago, the Mayans planted millions of nut trees in the central American rainforests. The nuts were their staple food. The trees remain, but the modern descendants of the Maya have forgotten about this forest food so completely that they trample the fallen nuts under foot and chop down the trees to make room for fields of corn that produce far less food. Or they did, until the American daughter of an Iranian-born doctor discovered the true worth of the Maya nut while working as a biologist in Guatemala. Now, thanks to her efforts, thousands of village women are once more harvesting the nuts for their families and selling them, along with nut products such as ice cream and cookies. A campaign is under way to save the nut forests, and this month, Erika Vohman won the St Andrews prize for her efforts. She tells Fred Pearce her story.

How did you discover the Maya nut?

I discovered the tree in Guatemala while working as a biologist for an animal rescue organisation. Every day, I went with an indigenous man, Augustine, to collect food for the parrots and monkeys. We mostly collected nuts and leaves from the Maya nut tree (which is also called ramon, ojoche, ujuxte or masica). The fallen nuts formed a carpet on the forest floor, and almost all the forest animals ate them. Augustine told me that his ancestors, the Maya, used to eat them too. He made me some nut soup, which was delicious. But people in the villages around us didn鈥檛 eat them. After I went back to the US, I found out how nutritious the nut is, and became convinced I should go back and tell the people who live in the forest about what they were missing.

It sounds like a labour of love.

Yes. I come from a lineage of plantophiles. My father, a pathologist who came to the US from Iran as a young man, has planted thousands of trees in Atlanta, where he lives. After I finished my master鈥檚 degree, he gave me a grant to start up. I worked with Oscar Murga from the UN Development Programme saving traditional crops and trying to help rural Guatemalan communities become more independent.

What was your first project?

It was at a village called La Benedici贸n. The people there were economic refugees who had recently acquired farms thanks to Guatemala鈥檚 land reform programme. When I arrived, they had just moved in. They hadn鈥檛 even planted any crops, were hungry and had no houses. I taught the women about Maya nuts, and that鈥檚 what they lived on for the next three months.

That was five years ago. Today, all the families in that village collect Maya nuts as part of their daily diet and for sale. They have planted a lot of new trees, too, and have set up their own organisation. They applied for a grant from the Global Environment Fund, which they have used to train other villages about Maya nuts.

Was that the end of your involvement?

I still go as often as I can to provide emotional support, but we don鈥檛 give them financial help. I have moved on to other areas: to other parts of Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua and Mexico. We are going to Costa Rica and Belize this year. I reckon we have trained 400 to 500 villages now, maybe more; villages now train each other, so it鈥檚 hard to keep track. The women are thunderstruck to discover they can eat stuff that they have always just walked over. They dry the nuts for eating as they are, and they grind them into flour. In some areas they now make and sell Maya nut products like cookies.

鈥淧eople are amazed to discover they can eat stuff they have always just walked over鈥�

Any sign of Ben and Jerry鈥檚 yet?

No, but we are trying to interest the Nicaraguan national ice cream company.

What sort of places do you target for training?

We go wherever there is extreme poverty and Maya nut trees. Because of all the logging and farming, the remaining trees are in the remote areas, which are also the poorest and the least well fed. More than half our villages can only be reached on foot or on horseback.

How could people have lost all knowledge that the nut was good food?

In some places they remembered it as famine food, so there has been a kind of stigma attached to eating it. There are also some old stories about how outsiders from Mexico introduced corn and stopped people eating Maya nuts. People know wild animals eat the nuts 鈥� the fattest wild pigs are those that have been eating them 鈥� but nobody realised that people could eat the nuts too. It鈥檚 odd, but true.

Are most of the communities you are working with indigenous people?

Maybe a third of our communities are indigenous. We would like to work with them more, but some of them are reluctant about being innovative. It鈥檚 considered selfish, and might jeopardise the community. They will eat the nuts, but it is different if a woman wants to start a business: there is a lot of sabotage, which makes the women very timid about coming forward. We have big plans for next year, though, to assist women in indigenous communities such as the Chorti, Miskiti, Pech and Tzeltal.

Why do you need to rely on the women?

Women are the cooks and responsible for feeding the children. I think focusing on women is the keystone of success. Many of the local groups we could work with have no female staff, but we won鈥檛 work with local groups unless they do.

The St Andrews prize is worth $50,000. What will you spend it on?

A typical village workshop costs us only about $200. The prize money is earmarked for Nicaragua, to help conserve the rainforests that remain there, and also Chiapas in southern Mexico. Right now, we are training Kekchi women in northern Guatemala. During the war between native peoples and the Guatemalan government that lasted from the 1960s to the 1990s, many of these women fled over the border to Chiapas. Now they are going to repay the hospitality they received by providing training about the nuts. That鈥檚 really cool. Winning the prize will also help boost our campaign to make the Maya nut tree a protected species, to stop the logging. That should happen in Nicaragua by November.

What is the tree like?

It鈥檚 the largest tree in the rainforest 鈥� up to 45 metres tall 鈥� and it produces a phenomenal amount of biomass. The leaves have lots of protein and increase milk production in livestock. It also makes great firewood 鈥� unfortunately.

What would you like to do next?

I spend five or six months a year in central America. I鈥檓 trying to phase myself out; that鈥檚 what every development project should aim for. Next, I would like to research the Maya nut tree. There is a lot we don鈥檛 know. It has huge genetic variety, so we need to preserve the best genetic material and make sure we reforest with the fastest-growing and most nutritious varieties. I would also like to map how the different varieties spread. That could provide a lot of information about ancient cultures in central America. It is hard for some people to imagine that a large tree growing in the wild is cultivated. But that is what the Maya nut tree is: an ancient cultivated crop. Hopefully, we have rediscovered it just in time.