As a child in Jundiaí, in the interior of São Paulo, Ricardo liked mate tea and even preferred it over cow's milk. But he didn't know that the popular tea was Ilex paraguariensis. It took several years for him to realize that mate and tererê also originated from this plant. Without realizing it, he chose the capital of erva-mate to follow a degree in Public Relations (Curitiba, Federal University of Paraná, 1996), and also discovered the distribution of erva-mate throughout southern Brazil, and its historical, cultural and economic importance for the region. Life went on, Ricardo worked for several years in nature conservation and specialized in associating economic activities with ecosystems and biodiversity. Erva-mate appeared again to illustrate this association and its cultivation served as a field of study for his Master's thesis in the Postgraduate Program in Technology and Society of the Federal Technological University of Paraná, which he completed in 2017. In this same Program and with equal interest in cultivation systems, he started his doctorate in 2018. His doctoral research uses Science, Technology and Society Studies — an interdisciplinary field of knowledge, enabling him to weave together and analyze the relationships of production of erva-mate with the generation of knowledge, techniques and technologies, and contributions to territorial development, particularly in the region of the mid Iguaçu River Valley  – Paraná.