In downtown Lima on a late May morning, journalists, politicians, and chefs crowded around ornate tables filled with foods served in bowl-shaped husks, on wood slabs, and wrapped in enormous green leaves that overflowed with exotic delicacies from the Amazon rainforest.

Smoked pork was flavored with a sauce made of camu camu, a lip-puckering, plum-like fruit that contains 40 times the vitamin C of an orange. A mashed yucca appetizer roll bore a spiral ribbon of aguaje, a fleshy palm fruit. Fresh and jarred tiny yellow charapita peppers, which add the heat of a habanero with tropical fruitiness to traditional Peruvian dishes, dotted the table.

Peru’s budding gastronomy scene has embraced many of the wild foods that have nourished Amazonian populations for generations. But creating a sustainable path from the jungle to urban Peruvian plates—or to export products—won’t be easy. It will require a special blend of like-minded Amazon dwellers, chefs, product developers, and policymakers to sow a sustainable appetite for jungle flavors.

Today, there are 40,000 hectares (99,000 acres) of oil palm plantations in Ucayali. An additional 250,000 hectares (618,000 acres) are legally feasible across the region if all existing pasture and purmas—lands intentionally left fallow to regenerate useful biodiversity as secondary forests—are converted to oil palm. The government is pushing for conversion, says José Sanchez Choy, a researcher at the National Intercultural University of the Amazon in Pucallpa, Peru. Troublingly, a recent study found no evidence that so-called community-company partnerships offer positive environmental outcomes. Instead, it found that 95 percent of the recent deforestation occurred on company-community partnership farms, and that all of the natural regeneration took place on farms that had no ties to palm oil companies.

Small-scale, or migratory, agriculture is commonly blamed for the vast majority of deforestation in the Amazon—a government claim that doesn’t hold up to scrutiny. Recent studies have shown that these “deforested” claims are based on the frequency of clearing—which would erroneously include, for example, recently-cleared purmas—instead of the total “deforested” area. And it’s on these small-scale farms where purmas are often allowed to regrow.

Purmas are, effectively, a savings account, says Sanchez Choy. In times of shortage, the trees can be cut and sold, but, in the interim, wild foods are among the vegetation that improves the land’s fertility. “In the purmas, there are important species for food security,” says Cruz Garcia.

In recent years, Pueblo Libre residents have put more effort into tending “wild” food crops—naturally growing, uncultivated species. Villagers transplant around 20 wild plants they depend on into home gardens and agricultural fields to keep them close, according to a recent study by Cruz Garcia. “People adapt to deforestation by managing wild foods,” she says.

Currently, most harvesters or growers sell wild Amazonian foods on a small scale, in local markets, for low prices. But if they can create demand beyond the Amazon, they could raise prices and encourage further planting and tending of these trees. It’s a far cry from farming a uniform crop. But there is some evidence of past domestication in many of these “wild” species. Brazil nut and cacao trees, for example, now dominate some forests long after humans abandoned them, demonstrating that previous generations have shaped landscapes with desirable species.

Sustainable cultivation of some wild foods will require dedicated, long-term management. Currently, species that take a long time to bear fruit, such as aguaje, are rarely transplanted close to the villages. What’s more, harvesters often cut down aguaje trees, rather than climbing them, to access their fleshy fruits. Unfortunately, this not only removes large trees from the forest, but because only female trees bear fruit, it also negatively impacts the genetic diversity of the species.

Chonta is a popular wild food that offers a cautionary tale. Long white ribbons of chonta—peeled from the heart of the peach palm, or pijuayo—are a common salad topper in Amazonian cuisine. Unfortunately, because the tree must be cut down to harvest the heart, the trees are disappearing from the Amazon. “It can be hard to find,” says Blanca Perez Morey, chef and co-founder of AGASU. Without cultivation of these palms, growing appetites could threaten the species.

It’s a fine line, Perez Morey says, between sparking demand for a seasonal wild food and risking a decimating surge of interest. “It is very complicated,” she says. But that’s why the chefs’ goal is unique. They want to promote a full palette of Amazonian foods—not just one or two “superfruits.” The use of gastronomy to promote sustainable, diversified farming systems could help conserve species as well as the knowledge of how to manage them and cook with them, says Robin Sears, a farm-forestry researcher at Yale University. Global demand for açaí, she notes, allowed small-scale Brazilian farmers to maintain diverse systems while earning an income.

Still, creating a viable market, even with government support, is incredibly difficult. The Research Institute of the Peruvian Amazon (IIAP) has worked for decades to breed new varieties of camu camu that bear fruit consistently and of a desirable size and flavor. But camu camu has yet to take off for a number of reasons, including high transportation costs, fluctuating prices, poor access to markets, and, ultimately, lack of farmer incentive.

Only one factor ultimately tempts growers: demand.

Chef Pedro Miguel Schiaffino has, perhaps more than anyone else, whetted Lima’s appetite for jungle flavors. Widely considered the original culinary ambassador from Lima to Ucayali, Schiaffino’s restaurant Malabar—the first to feature dishes with wild Amazonian foods—opened in the trendy Miraflores area in 2004. Eight years later, he later opened AmaZ, with a menu dedicated solely to Amazonian foods. Malabar chefs estimate there are now roughly eight other restaurants in Lima that use Amazonian ingredients.

Schiaffino’s ceviche—Peru’s signature raw seafood dish—features tumbo, a tart, acidic fruit similar to passionfruit, rather than the traditional lime or lemon. A tapioca dish swims in a sauce made of cocona, the tangy “Amazon tomato.” And his smoked fish has a deep red color from a glaze made of achiote, the red seeds found inside the hairy red pods of a native shrub used to make dyes and juices during Carnival season.

Customer favorites include Amazonian fruits—cocona, açaí, camu camu—and paiche, the fish. “The moment they taste them, they like them,” says Malabar chef Alexander Carmen. It took time for customers to embrace that the ever-changing menu reflects seasonal production. The most difficult part was to keep a steady supply of sources coming; it took two to three years for Schiaffino to gain harvesters’ trust. It’s a 15-hour journey by road from Pucallpa, the capital of Ucayali, to Lima. Ten years ago, no one would bring Amazonian fish or fruits to Lima, Carmen says.

Paiche demonstrates how complex it can be to transition a wild food to sustainable production. A beast of a carnivorous, ancient fish, paiche can reach up to 10 feet in length and weigh 400 pounds. Once common, overharvesting eventually devastated the species. Fishing restrictions are now in place, and government-supported researchers have developed aquaculture techniques. Farm-raised paiche—at around 200 tons country-wide in 2017—has more than doubled since 2013, theoretically reducing fishing pressure on wild stocks. It’s unclear whether wild stocks are recovering, however. And aquaculture here, like elsewhere, must be carefully managed to be sustainable. But the efforts to build a global market for paiche have certainly been successful—the fish is now available for sale at Whole Foods Markets, along with an array of recipes to inspire home cooks.

In 2012, the Peruvian Society of Gastronomy organized a competition—El Paichezazo—to promote Amazonian cuisine and biodiversity. Teresita Macedo Alvarez, chef-owner of El Viajero in Pucallpa, won the award with her daughter, Janina Alania Macedo, chef-owner of D’Matheus Restrobar, a nearby barbeque restaurant. Their dish “Mishkina de Paiche”—mishkina is a local word for delicious—features crisp fried balls of delicately seasoned fish on top of a pillow of cassava. Swirls of sweet and savory dipping sauces made of the fruits cocona and aguaje, as well as the garlicky green herb sacha culantro, bring the dish to life.

“Nobody in gastronomy cared about Ucayali before 2012, when we won the award,” says Alania Macedo. The mother-daughter members of AGASU say the recognition was a game-changer. “Before our paiche dish, the fish didn’t have a big reputation beyond Ucayali,“ says Alania Macedo. Other regions in Peru generally received all the awards and attention.