Acai - how the secret of the Amazon was revealed

Acai might not be such a global sensation today were it not for a pair of Southern California brothers, Ryan and Jeremy Black, who co-founded Sambazon, based in San Clemente. The company now boasts sales of $25 million a year in juices, powders and other acai products. But it all started with a surfing trip.

Ryan Black returned from a millennium-marking surfing visit to Brazil blown away by acai. In the 1990s, acai had spread from the Amazon to become a staple in surfer shacks, juice joints and weightlifting clubs along the heavily populated Brazilian coast. Now it's a common sight at major supermarkets and health food emporiums the world over. Among the retail chains selling acai products are Whole Foods Market, Vons, Albertsons, Gelson's Markets, Jamba Juice and Juice It Up.

This year, Black says, Sambazon plans to process 11,000 tons of acai from its Brazilian production base, making it the world's leading supplier.

All of it comes from individuals such as Rosa picking the fruit from wild acai palms, according to the Black brothers, who have won praise internationally as "green" business pioneers.

"The whole idea is to protect the biodiversity of the forest," Ryan Black says. "The idea is not to clear-cut everything on the land and plant acai trees."

But a growing concentration of acai plantings amid rising demand has Black worried about a "dangerous cycle": transformation of bio-diverse forests into proliferating stretches of acai palms. That means removing other tree species to make way for acai. His hope is that consumer preference for certified organic acai, picked in the wild, will help preserve the forest and support harvesting families.

"We want to look back [in] 20 years and see that acai has been a positive force in the Amazon," Black says, "not just a fruit that became domesticated and found success at the price of the local people and their environment."

http://www.sambazon.com/remoting/news_article.aspx?id=116