dezembro, 16 2024

By WWF-Brazil 

The Cerrado, the second largest biome in the country and home to aquifers responsible for feeding important rivers on the continent, is also one of the most threatened. With its configuration compromised by agribusiness, one of the strategies to keep it standing is the promotion of socio-biodiversity businesses.  
 
What are socio-biodiversity businesses?  
 
This is the name given to businesses that operate and sell products from the Brazilian biodiversity chains, managed ancestrally by traditional communities and peoples. In the Cerrado, the chain of baru, golden grass, pequi and babassu stands out. The four examples are precisely of predominant chains in the biome.  
 
These businesses are, at the same time, economic activity and environmental service, since the conserved biome generates alternative income and contributes to reducing the impacts of climate change. In addition, to the extent that they allow traditional populations to remain in their territory, with their traditions, it has a positive social and cultural impact.  

Babassu coconut: from pindoba to socio-biodiversity business  

In the Middle Mearim region, in Maranhão, breaking babassu coconuts is an activity carried out by women, and which connects families to the territory. The nut is sold to make products such as babassu oil (for domestic and industrial use), but also oil and soap. While breaking the coconut, the women sing songs that talk about everyday life and their struggles, which earned them the nickname of enchanters. More than tradition, breaking coconuts is also survival in the face of land conflicts, confronting deforestation and the way each generation fed its children.  

"It all started with hunger," recalls Franciene Pereira Frazão, 50, now manager of the Soap Factory of the Association of Rural Women Workers of Lago do Junco and Lago dos Rodrigues (AMTR). "We broke the coconut, exchanged it for a handful of rice that we ate with garden chives. [This] when there was a garden, because the cattle [of the farmers] destroyed everything." From hunger came the mobilization of women, who still faced resistance at home, with their husbands refusing to help them. After much persistence, they finally joined them.  

Collective organization was necessary, which resulted in unions, cooperatives and associations, such as AMTR, the Cooperative of Small Agroextractivist Producers of Lago do Junco (COPPALJ) and the Association in Settlement Areas of Maranhão (ASSEMA). The region stands out for its social organization and the struggle for land in the 1980s, which is reflected in the way they are structured.  

COPPALJ, created in the early 1990s by agroextractivist farmers, is focused on the production and marketing of crude and refined organic babassu oil. ASSEMA, on the other hand, originated in the 1980s, operates beyond the municipality of Lago do Junco. The coconut breakers, by the way, are not only there in Maranhão, but are also easily found in regions of Piauí, Tocantins and even in Pará – the babassu palm trees are typical of the transition between Cerrado, Caatinga and Amazon. The work of local organizations is successful for several reasons. Among them, for becoming an attraction for children and grandchildren of breakers.  

Adherents of the pedagogy of alternation, in which students alternate theory in the classroom with the activities done by their family members in the field, the younger generations have the opportunity to complete higher education outside the territory and return home. Some have already specialized in agricultural methods or animal science in formal education, now integrating the teams of ASSEMA or COPPALJ. With a contemporary vision of what it is to do agriculture, they propose paths that add to traditional knowledge.  

Together with several other organizations, the three entities improved the production of items originating from coconut, fine-tuned the entire chain, reached more markets, national and international, and were ready for more maturation. Thus, the Babaçu Livre Consortium emerged.  

Babaçu Livre Consortium  

"The Babaçu Livre Consortium is the network union of several organizations that already work with babassu, to support and learn from collective experiences in order to reach more markets", explains Ana Carolina Bauer, conservation analyst at WWF-Brazil. "To reach the market is to increase income, and to increase income is to provide an alternative to stay in the territory." Within WWF-Brazil's Cerrado conservation strategy, the babassu chain is seen as one of the most socially and environmentally impactful and therefore needs to be strengthened.  

The Consortium is supported by organizations such as Central do Cerrado, a cooperative that brings together several community groups from the biome and the Caatinga, offering technical and informative support, but also as a point of sale for the products made by the partners. According to Mayk Arruda, who has been working with babassu within the Central do Cerrado for two decades, the idea is to take all this knowledge acquired in more than 30 years of struggle and social organization of the Lago do Junco community to other entities that work with coconuts. The very name of the Consortium is the result of a victory of the class: when, from 2008 onwards, the breakers were able to freely access the babassu trees, with the legal support of the Free Babassu Law.  

"We realize, especially in the babassu chain, that it is possible to build commercial relationships that promote equity of gains between the parties, from the beginning to the end of the chain," says Mayk. "In addition to generating a product of excellent quality, versatile and applicable in many segments, there is this whole context of socio-environmental, socio-political contribution, aimed at building fairer production and marketing relationships, for an audience that is increasingly demanding with the origin of what it buys and aware of what it puts in its own body."  

Consumption combined with conservation  

In all its versatility, babassu coconut oil is an option for oils commonly associated with environmental degradation.  
"Babassu is not a monoculture," Agenor Nepomuceno, an agricultural technician, clarifies. "It is possible to have other types of life in consortium with palm trees, such as planting other species, orchards and even cattle", teaches the son of breakers "with great pride", a child of the pedagogy of alternation.  
 
He also recalls that a single babassu palm tree can live 80 years. And that even though it has its peak from 25 to 45 years old, elderly trees are essential to make the carbon reserve – apart from the shade they generate. The young ones, the pindobas, only start producing at the age of 15. Therefore, says Agenor, it is always necessary to balance the existence of the three phases in the same territory. And never, ever, cut the pindobas, that haven't even started producing yet.  

Every time a person consumes a product that uses coconut oil broken by the enchanters, they encourage the conservation of the forest and traditional ways of life, since it is almost impossible to separate the palm tree from the babassu tree from the breaker. In the words of Silvianete Carvalho, Executive Secretary of ASSEMA: "The babassu palm tree is like the feminine nature, resilient, resistant, careful, mother of many. It has resisted years of degradation, deforestation, fire and neglect. Just as we women have always resisted."