The increased cultivation of açaí - the purple fruit that dangles from palms
in the Brazilian rainforest and is touted by many celebrities as the number one
superfood for ‘age-defying beauty’ - may be one of the reasons for the
country’s staggering increase in forest cover over the past two decades,
scientists said at the
World
Conservation Congress last week.
“It is actually replacing cattle pastures in certain areas of the Amazonian
floodplain,” said Christine Padoch, director of forests and livelihoods
research at the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR). She was
speaking at a workshop organised by
CIFOR
and
Bioversity on
managing wild systems and species for global food security.
The Brazilian Amazon, covering 4.1 million square km, accounts for one third
of the world’s remaining tropical forests. While
deforestation
fell by 76 percent between 2004 and 2010, the expansion of agribusiness
into the country’s forest and grassland in recent years has seen swathes of
forests transformed for
agricultural
and
cattle
ranching activities.
But in the estuary of the
Amazon
where açaí (pronounced ah-sigh-ee) is native, local farmers are
transforming natural forests of the fruit so that they can meet global demand.
In other cases they follow a shifting cultivation trajectory – that is
selective clearing of natural forests (often leaving some trees) and planting
of açaí trees while also managing natural regeneration.
It is actually replacing cattle pastures in certain areas of the Amazonian
floodplain.
While all types of plantations may improve forest cover, smallholder
management is better for biodiversity, says Padoch.
Monocultures are often pushed by external developers who believe mixed
cultivation models cannot produce a high-enough yield to meet market demand.
“If açaí agroforests are managed by smallholders they tend to have many
other species in there, because people use these areas to support their own
livelihoods,” Padoch said.
“For example, farmers often also plant fast-growing timber species for
construction and even small amounts of rice next to the açaí trees, because the
estuarine area floods twice a day and the rice attracts fish for them to eat.
“This way of managing forests is a method that we really need to know more
about,” she added, noting that may be especially true as the world tries to
find ways to increase food production and income while preserving forests and
biodiversity.
“This may be one piece of the puzzle that we have been ignoring up until
now.”
INVISIBLE FOREST MANAGEMENT
The explosion of açaí on the international market as the chic miracle food
(global sales are in the hundreds of millions) poses some important problems
for local farmers who have managed these fruit trees for many millennia, said
Padoch.
“People seem to think that although smallholders may know the area and
resources, they don’t know how to manage and produce for a market.”
“There are lot of projects saying that ‘we’ve got to come in here and design
management techniques,’ but it is hard to argue that we will know how to manage
it better than the local people,” she said.
“In fact, these are areas that probably tend to be labelled in land-use
plans as places where you can’t possibly do agriculture because it floods twice
a day, but this is exactly where the local people can and are doing
agriculture.”
“Even though this is somewhat of a new situation where the market has
changed extremely, people still managed to respond to it largely using their
own knowledge of this species and their own management techniques.”
In general, forest land is perceived as unproductive, says
Eduardo Brondizio in his book The Amazonian Caboclo and the Açaí Palm:
Forest Farmers in the Global Market. When tangible changes are made to land,
the farmers who plant and tend the crops are recognised for their economic role
and their asserted ownership of the land.
But açaí farmers who produce in
forested areas are perceived as not transforming the land, so they are not
recognised for their contribution and in many cases don’t have legal claim to
the land.
“In fact, contrary to large portions of the Amazon, the forest farmer’s land
has been transformed – without deforestation – in a productive
way,” Brondizio said.
“It’s important to reframe the issue in a way that recognises their economic
contributions and intensive forest management and planting techniques by
referring to them as producers and not extravists.”
Padoch agrees, saying in this way, we can better recognise the economic
potential of standing forests and ensure smallholder management of forests
becomes visible.
“This is what we really want to focus on now - whether it is possible to
work with smallholder forest management, not making this just something that
follows conventional forestry ideas but follows these ideas of managing for
ecosystem services and for food that have been around for a long time.”
This work is part of CIFOR’s research program on Forests, Trees and Agroforestry in
smallholder production systems and markets.
This blog first appeared on the CIFOR
website.
