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SUSTAINABLE COCOA FROM THE BRAZILIAN AMAZON

A MODEL THAT WORKS

By Ray Major, SCHARFFEN BERGER Chocolate Maker

In the heart of the eastern Amazon, farmers in Tomé-Açu have developed a form of sustainable agriculture that may serve as a model for rainforest development around the world. They make a respectable income on land previously exploited by slash and burn clearing for cattle and monocultures (single crop plantings). Their income is based upon reforestation of degraded rainforest areas using succesional agroforestry systems that employ up to seventy different plant species which generate income over a short, mid and long term horizon. These farms are vertically stratified, employing under story and canopy species that form a surrogate rainforest structure that locks carbon like a true rainforest and is useful in preserving the region's unique biodiversity. And how did they learn these techniques? Through tough experience, and by observing their indigenous neighbors.

History
In 1920 Sanji Muto, a Japanese statesman and businessman, traveled to Brazil to scout potential locations for colonization in the Amazon. With cooperation from the Brazilian and Japanese governments, a recruiting company was formed, and a tract on the banks of Rio Acará, in the Pará state, about 230 kilometers from Belem was chosen as the colony site. In 1929 the colony started with 43 immigrant families. Despite significant hardships, new immigrants continued to come from Japan. In the first six years, 600 families arrived and the colony founded two villages—Tomé-Açu and Quatro Bocas. In 1933, a steamer from Tokyo en route to Brazil with a new group of immigrants made an unscheduled stop in Singapore and the colonial recruiting agent, Makinosuki Ussui, purchased 20 black pepper seedlings. Though no one realized it at the time, these seedlings would have a pivotal impact on the colony at Tomé-Açu.

The Colony
Life was harsh in the early days of the colony. Their new Brazilian customers weren't interested in the vegetable crops the new immigrants were growing. The land cleared by the colonists attracted Anopheles mosquitoes, and the colony was decimated by malaria and blackwater fever. Tomé-Açu was nicknamed “o inferno da Amazônia.” The colonial recruiting company went out of business and, by the start of World War II, only forty of the original families from the colony remained. During the war many of the Japanese immigrants in Brazil were interned like their American counterparts, but after the war they returned to their farms and traditional farming methods and found that the conflict had opened a great opportunity for them. Southeast Asian black pepper plantations had been destroyed during WWII and the price for the spice skyrocketed. Although only two of the 20 black pepper seedlings brought from Singapore in 1933 had survived the voyage, eventually 850,000 plants were propagated from them. In Brazil, peppercorns would eventually become known as the “black diamond”.

The first attempts at black pepper cultivation in the colony started in 1947 and by the 1950's, there was an acceleration of planting in the form of huge monoculture tracts paired with cattle ranching. By 1956, production from Tomé-Açu met all of the Brazilian demand. The 1960's saw further expansion of black pepper production as the Brazilian farmers in the region began to take up its cultivation. By the 1970's, crops began to feel the effect of Fusarium, a fungal disease which shortens the productive life of the black pepper plant from 15 to 5 years. It spread through the region's crops. The farmers reacted by clearing more land and planting more black pepper in order to keep production at the same level—and even increased production. In the 1970's Brazil began to export black pepper and, by the early 1980's, was the world's largest producer and exporter. During this same period, however, world prices for black pepper began to fall dramatically - Southeast Asia had come back into pepper production creating a market surplus. In Brazil, the market surplus coupled with high internal inflation and reduced farm credit availability halted large scale expansion, and pepper production shifted to small family farms. In Tomé-Açu these family farms began a small farming revolution.

The Tomé-Açu farmers had witnessed the fallacy of large scale monoculture. With no farm credit available there was no money to purchase fertilizer or other agricultural inputs. At the same time they began to understand that the fertility of the rainforest is held by the trees not the soil, so any sustainable agriculture in this region would need to have tree crops as its base. These small growers lived in close contact with the indigenous people of the region, who lived by a combination of subsistence farming and extraction of natural products from the forest. Learning from their neighbors, the Japanese immigrants developed a diverse and productive system of agroforestry that proved both sustainable and capable of generating middle class incomes to family farmers—something that exists no where else in the Amazon.

CAMTA (Cooperativa Agrícola Mista de Tomé-Açu )
In 1931 the immigrants had formed the cooperative CAMTA to market their vegetable crops in Belem. With the black pepper boom CAMTA became the largest producer and exporter in Brazil. They used the income derived from black pepper to help develop the community of Tomé-Açu by building a hospital, schools and a supermarket. CAMTA also played a key role in directing their members toward the sustainable agricultural systems that are employed today. Since most tropical fruits spoil quickly after harvest, CAMTA built a frozen fruit pulp processing plant in the early 1980's to provide an outlet for the diverse crops with which the local farmers were experimenting. In the 1990's they almost went out of business due to the inflationary crisis in the Brazilian economy, but they showed their versatility by forming a partnership with the Cooperativa de Electrificação e Telefônica and were able to survive. Today the plant processes and markets 13 different types of fruit pulp for its members. The fruit pulp is sold on the domestic market and exported to Japan, Europe and the USA. They annually export over 1,100 ton of açaí pulp—300 ton alone to Sambazon, their largest US customer. Their total annual sales exceed R$ 12,000,000 (app. US$ 6,000,000). Today CAMTA is one of the most profitable cooperatives in Brazil. It has 124 members, 70% of who are descendents of Japanese immigrants. In addition to fruit pulp and black pepper they sell cacao to the internal market as well as Brazil nuts and other crops. The 15 tonnes of cacao purchased from CAMTA this year by Artisan Confections is the first cacao ever exported by the cooperative.

Cacao
Cacao was one of the earliest crops planted by the colony in Tomé-Açu, but the crops failed. The colonists didn't know the techniques required to grow it. In 1971, cacao was reintroduced on a small scale by some of the farmers. Black pepper was still generating almost 100% of the farmer's income, but Fusarium had significantly altered the crop's dynamics. As they cleared new land to plant more black pepper they began to interplant with cacao. Using this regime the farmers began to harvest black pepper after the first year of planting. By the fifth year, Fusarium began to kill the black pepper plants, but the cacao trees became productive and generated income. Using this simple model the farmers were able to extend their land's horizon of productivity. The major problem was that this model relied on the continued clearing of new land to plant more black pepper, but paradoxically it was the first step toward a sustainable system.

Sustainability – The Tomé-Açu Model
Fortunately, the farmers' experimentation did not stop with cacao. As they saw the price of black pepper crash on the world market and witnessed the devastation of cacao caused by witches broom to the Bahian cacao farmers, they became all too aware of the danger associated with depending on a single crop. They hired an agronomist to study the soils and they began to look for more sustainable crops. What they found is no surprise today, but at the time was revolutionary—especially for a group of small farmers in the middle of the Amazon: that the true fertility of the rainforest is in the trees and not the soil. To have sustainable and productive farms, farmers would need to plant tree crops and, if they were not to be dependent upon the caprices of world commodity prices, the crops would need to be diverse and saleable in local markets. For inspiration, the Tomé-Açu farmers turned their attention to the local subsistence farmers and extraction of natural products from the rainforest.

As the Tomé-Açu farmers began experimenting with systems of agroforestry or land originally cleared for black pepper monoculture, they also realized that a key component of sustainable agriculture in the tropics is diversity. A forest has a canopy and an under story. If they could plant productive species that occupy both levels then they would have a balanced system that could provide year-round income that was sustainable over a long period of time.

Two species were considered pivotal to the development of productive agroforestry systems: cacao and cupuaçu. Both are shade tolerant species, native to the Amazon basin, that begin to produce three to five years after planting and continue to produce indefinitely. Both species produce large quantities of leaf litter and are beneficial in the recuperation of degraded soils and both can be grown at fairly high densities beneath income generating canopy species such as Brazil nut, teak, mahogany, andiroba, paricá and feijó. The marketable product from cacao is the bean, a commodity traded on international markets and subject to price fluctuations that are uncontrollable at the local level. With it there is potential for large profits or corresponding losses depending on the international market price. With cupuaçu there is some market for the seeds, but it is the pulp, consumed primarily by the domestic market, that generates most of the income. The two products complement each other like an investment strategy that incorporates elements of both high and low risk.

Another native crop that has recently become important in the Tomé-Açu agroforestry system is açaí. Açaí is a multi-stem palm species that occurs naturally on the floodplains of the Eastern Amazon. It produces large bunches of small blackish-blue fruit that can be processed into a thick juice that is nutritious and extremely high in antioxidants. After manioc flour it is the highest source of caloric intake by the rural population of the region. Its high fat content and incredible antioxidant activity have recently attracted the attention of health food and energy drink producers around the globe. Açaí stalks also provide the heart of palm (called palmito) that is used in salads, soups and empanadas around Brazil. Even better, the stems of the plant regenerates easily after cutting.

The agroforestry models using multiple species crop with staggered yields empower small farmers in the Amazon to derive significant income from their holdings using environmentally sound techniques. One indication of the economic success achieved by these farmers is that only 18% of them grow staple crops such as rice, beans, corn and vegetables on their properties. The remainder purchase these at the market. Over 36% of the farmers market products 12 months of the year and 63.6% can market products more than eight months per year.

Though most farms have 3 to 4 staggered yield crops, what is unique about the Tomé-Açu farmers is their willingness to experiment. One farmer in the region, Naburo Sakaguchi, has 73 species growing on a 60 hectare farm. This may be extreme, but several farmers utilize more than ten species to generate income from a single agroforestry system.

Although no studies have been made to evaluate the impact that these farms have had on the region's biodiversity, there is significant research showing that shade grown coffee and cacao in much simpler agroforestry systems are capable of maintaining a significant amount of bird, small mammal, reptile, amphibian and insect biodiversity. The combinations of canopy and under story species provide a structure similar to the natural rainforest and observers walking in some of the more complex farms above have commented that they appear almost indistinguishable from the natural rainforest. A number of authors have suggested that, in addition to preserving their own significant portion of a region's biodiversity, these types of farms can also serve as buffer zones around remnant tracts of original rainforest, effectively limiting human impact and serving as corridors for species movement (and gene flow) between remnant tracts of rainforest.

Conclusion and Summary
Tomé-Açu is a unique example where small farmers in the Amazon, growing largely indigenous crops, have been able to move beyond subsistence to a level of affluence comparable with the Brazilian middle class. The success of the Tomé-Açu experience is linked to a community united by a common ancestry and with the inherent cultural values of community service, economic austerity and cooperation, the model developed by these unique farmers is transferable to other people and regions of the Amazon—and beyond.

An important component of this success has been the foresight and vision of CAMTA, the farmers' cooperative, in developing markets for the indigenous fruits grown by its members. The affluence these farmers enjoy today would have been impossible without construction of the fruit pulp processing plant in the 1980's and the access to additional markets that it provided. The Tomé-Açu farmers have also had access to rural credit, a key component when investing in new crops and techniques.

These farmers have taken a holistic approach to agriculture using the rainforest itself as their model and have created sustainable agroforestry systems that provide income from diverse sources. Cacao is a key component of many of these systems, but nowhere does it dominate. The farmers who grow cacao are buffered against fluctuations in world cocoa prices by other crops that generate equal or greater income. Their initiatives are homegrown and unsupported by or dependent upon foundations or NGO's. The agroforestry systems that they have developed are world famous among ecologists and economists. Many consider this a model for reforestation of rainforests around the world. Estimates differ among scientists, but it is generally accepted that more than 20% of the Amazon has already been deforested. The principal causes of this deforestation have been clearing for cattle and soybean bean cultivation, timber harvesting to make charcoal and predatory logging. Much of this land has already been abandoned because the nutrients in the soil have been exhausted. It now lies fallow, covered by second growth capoeira. The ranchers, farmers and loggers have moved on and the deforestation continues. It can be argued that if the agroforestry techniques employed by the Tomé-Açu farmers were used to develop this land in the first place, most of the land cleared in the last 20 years would now be entering it's most productive period, generating 10 times or more the income per hectare possible from cattle. This is hindsight, but it can be foresight. Eighty percent of the world's largest rainforest and most precious reserve of biodiversity still remains, and although most of it will eventually be developed, perhaps the farmers of Tomé-Açu have shown us how.


[click here] to print entire article SUSTAINABLE COCOA FROM THE BRAZILIAN AMAZON A MODEL THAT WORKS By Ray Major, SCHARFFEN BERGER Chocolate Maker In the heart of the eastern Amazon, farmers in Tomé-Açu have developed a form of sustainable agriculture that may serve as a model for rainforest development around the world. They make a respectable income on land previously exploited by slash and burn clearing for cattle and monocultures (single crop plantings). Their income is based upon reforestation of degraded rainforest areas using succesional agroforestry systems that employ up to seventy different plant species which generate income over a short, mid and long term horizon. These farms are vertically stratified, employing under story and canopy species that form a surrogate rainforest structure that locks carbon like a true rainforest and is useful in preserving the region's unique biodiversity. And how did they learn these techniques? Through tough experience, and by observing their indigenous neighbors. History In 1920 Sanji Muto, a Japanese statesman and businessman, traveled to Brazil to scout potential locations for colonization in the Amazon. With cooperation from the Brazilian and Japanese governments, a recruiting company was formed, and a tract on the banks of Rio Acará, in the Pará state, about 230 kilometers from Belem was chosen as the colony site. In 1929 the colony started with 43 immigrant families. Despite significant hardships, new immigrants continued to come from Japan. In the first six years, 600 families arrived and the colony founded two villages—Tomé-Açu and Quatro Bocas. In 1933, a steamer from Tokyo en route to Brazil with a new group of immigrants made an unscheduled stop in Singapore and the colonial recruiting agent, Makinosuki Ussui, purchased 20 black pepper seedlings. Though no one realized it at the time, these seedlings would have a pivotal impact on the colony at Tomé-Açu. The Colony Life was harsh in the early days of the colony. Their new Brazilian customers weren't interested in the vegetable crops the new immigrants were growing. The land cleared by the colonists attracted Anopheles mosquitoes, and the colony was decimated by malaria and blackwater fever. Tomé-Açu was nicknamed “o inferno da Amazônia.” The colonial recruiting company went out of business and, by the start of World War II, only forty of the original families from the colony remained. During the war many of the Japanese immigrants in Brazil were interned like their American counterparts, but after the war they returned to their farms and traditional farming methods and found that the conflict had opened a great opportunity for them. Southeast Asian black pepper plantations had been destroyed during WWII and the price for the spice skyrocketed. Although only two of the 20 black pepper seedlings brought from Singapore in 1933 had survived the voyage, eventually 850,000 plants were propagated from them. In Brazil, peppercorns would eventually become known as the “black diamond”. The first attempts at black pepper cultivation in the colony started in 1947 and by the 1950's, there was an acceleration of planting in the form of huge monoculture tracts paired with cattle ranching. By 1956, production from Tomé-Açu met all of the Brazilian demand. The 1960's saw further expansion of black pepper production as the Brazilian farmers in the region began to take up its cultivation. By the 1970's, crops began to feel the effect of Fusarium, a fungal disease which shortens the productive life of the black pepper plant from 15 to 5 years. It spread through the region's crops. The farmers reacted by clearing more land and planting more black pepper in order to keep production at the same level—and even increased production. In the 1970's Brazil began to export black pepper and, by the early 1980's, was the world's largest producer and exporter. During this same period, however, world prices for black pepper began to fall dramatically - Southeast Asia had come back into pepper production creating a market surplus. In Brazil, the market surplus coupled with high internal inflation and reduced farm credit availability halted large scale expansion, and pepper production shifted to small family farms. In Tomé-Açu these family farms began a small farming revolution. The Tomé-Açu farmers had witnessed the fallacy of large scale monoculture. With no farm credit available there was no money to purchase fertilizer or other agricultural inputs. At the same time they began to understand that the fertility of the rainforest is held by the trees not the soil, so any sustainable agriculture in this region would need to have tree crops as its base. These small growers lived in close contact with the indigenous people of the region, who lived by a combination of subsistence farming and extraction of natural products from the forest. Learning from their neighbors, the Japanese immigrants developed a diverse and productive system of agroforestry that proved both sustainable and capable of generating middle class incomes to family farmers—something that exists no where else in the Amazon. CAMTA (Cooperativa Agrícola Mista de Tomé-Açu ) In 1931 the immigrants had formed the cooperative CAMTA to market their vegetable crops in Belem. With the black pepper boom CAMTA became the largest producer and exporter in Brazil. They used the income derived from black pepper to help develop the community of Tomé-Açu by building a hospital, schools and a supermarket. CAMTA also played a key role in directing their members toward the sustainable agricultural systems that are employed today. Since most tropical fruits spoil quickly after harvest, CAMTA built a frozen fruit pulp processing plant in the early 1980's to provide an outlet for the diverse crops with which the local farmers were experimenting. In the 1990's they almost went out of business due to the inflationary crisis in the Brazilian economy, but they showed their versatility by forming a partnership with the Cooperativa de Electrificação e Telefônica and were able to survive. Today the plant processes and markets 13 different types of fruit pulp for its members. The fruit pulp is sold on the domestic market and exported to Japan, Europe and the USA. They annually export over 1,100 ton of açaí pulp—300 ton alone to Sambazon, their largest US customer. Their total annual sales exceed R$ 12,000,000 (app. US$ 6,000,000). Today CAMTA is one of the most profitable cooperatives in Brazil. It has 124 members, 70% of who are descendents of Japanese immigrants. In addition to fruit pulp and black pepper they sell cacao to the internal market as well as Brazil nuts and other crops. The 15 tonnes of cacao purchased from CAMTA this year by Artisan Confections is the first cacao ever exported by the cooperative. Cacao Cacao was one of the earliest crops planted by the colony in Tomé-Açu, but the crops failed. The colonists didn't know the techniques required to grow it. In 1971, cacao was reintroduced on a small scale by some of the farmers. Black pepper was still generating almost 100% of the farmer's income, but Fusarium had significantly altered the crop's dynamics. As they cleared new land to plant more black pepper they began to interplant with cacao. Using this regime the farmers began to harvest black pepper after the first year of planting. By the fifth year, Fusarium began to kill the black pepper plants, but the cacao trees became productive and generated income. Using this simple model the farmers were able to extend their land's horizon of productivity. The major problem was that this model relied on the continued clearing of new land to plant more black pepper, but paradoxically it was the first step toward a sustainable system. Sustainability – The Tomé-Açu Model Fortunately, the farmers' experimentation did not stop with cacao. As they saw the price of black pepper crash on the world market and witnessed the devastation of cacao caused by witches broom to the Bahian cacao farmers, they became all too aware of the danger associated with depending on a single crop. They hired an agronomist to study the soils and they began to look for more sustainable crops. What they found is no surprise today, but at the time was revolutionary—especially for a group of small farmers in the middle of the Amazon: that the true fertility of the rainforest is in the trees and not the soil. To have sustainable and productive farms, farmers would need to plant tree crops and, if they were not to be dependent upon the caprices of world commodity prices, the crops would need to be diverse and saleable in local markets. For inspiration, the Tomé-Açu farmers turned their attention to the local subsistence farmers and extraction of natural products from the rainforest. As the Tomé-Açu farmers began experimenting with systems of agroforestry or land originally cleared for black pepper monoculture, they also realized that a key component of sustainable agriculture in the tropics is diversity. A forest has a canopy and an under story. If they could plant productive species that occupy both levels then they would have a balanced system that could provide year-round income that was sustainable over a long period of time. Two species were considered pivotal to the development of productive agroforestry systems: cacao and cupuaçu. Both are shade tolerant species, native to the Amazon basin, that begin to produce three to five years after planting and continue to produce indefinitely. Both species produce large quantities of leaf litter and are beneficial in the recuperation of degraded soils and both can be grown at fairly high densities beneath income generating canopy species such as Brazil nut, teak, mahogany, andiroba, paricá and feijó. The marketable product from cacao is the bean, a commodity traded on international markets and subject to price fluctuations that are uncontrollable at the local level. With it there is potential for large profits or corresponding losses depending on the international market price. With cupuaçu there is some market for the seeds, but it is the pulp, consumed primarily by the domestic market, that generates most of the income. The two products complement each other like an investment strategy that incorporates elements of both high and low risk. Another native crop that has recently become important in the Tomé-Açu agroforestry system is açaí. Açaí is a multi-stem palm species that occurs naturally on the floodplains of the Eastern Amazon. It produces large bunches of small blackish-blue fruit that can be processed into a thick juice that is nutritious and extremely high in antioxidants. After manioc flour it is the highest source of caloric intake by the rural population of the region. Its high fat content and incredible antioxidant activity have recently attracted the attention of health food and energy drink producers around the globe. Açaí stalks also provide the heart of palm (called palmito) that is used in salads, soups and empanadas around Brazil. Even better, the stems of the plant regenerates easily after cutting. The agroforestry models using multiple species crop with staggered yields empower small farmers in the Amazon to derive significant income from their holdings using environmentally sound techniques. One indication of the economic success achieved by these farmers is that only 18% of them grow staple crops such as rice, beans, corn and vegetables on their properties. The remainder purchase these at the market. Over 36% of the farmers market products 12 months of the year and 63.6% can market products more than eight months per year. Though most farms have 3 to 4 staggered yield crops, what is unique about the Tomé-Açu farmers is their willingness to experiment. One farmer in the region, Naburo Sakaguchi, has 73 species growing on a 60 hectare farm. This may be extreme, but several farmers utilize more than ten species to generate income from a single agroforestry system. Although no studies have been made to evaluate the impact that these farms have had on the region's biodiversity, there is significant research showing that shade grown coffee and cacao in much simpler agroforestry systems are capable of maintaining a significant amount of bird, small mammal, reptile, amphibian and insect biodiversity. The combinations of canopy and under story species provide a structure similar to the natural rainforest and observers walking in some of the more complex farms above have commented that they appear almost indistinguishable from the natural rainforest. A number of authors have suggested that, in addition to preserving their own significant portion of a region's biodiversity, these types of farms can also serve as buffer zones around remnant tracts of original rainforest, effectively limiting human impact and serving as corridors for species movement (and gene flow) between remnant tracts of rainforest. Conclusion and Summary Tomé-Açu is a unique example where small farmers in the Amazon, growing largely indigenous crops, have been able to move beyond subsistence to a level of affluence comparable with the Brazilian middle class. The success of the Tomé-Açu experience is linked to a community united by a common ancestry and with the inherent cultural values of community service, economic austerity and cooperation, the model developed by these unique farmers is transferable to other people and regions of the Amazon—and beyond. An important component of this success has been the foresight and vision of CAMTA, the farmers' cooperative, in developing markets for the indigenous fruits grown by its members. The affluence these farmers enjoy today would have been impossible without construction of the fruit pulp processing plant in the 1980's and the access to additional markets that it provided. The Tomé-Açu farmers have also had access to rural credit, a key component when investing in new crops and techniques. These farmers have taken a holistic approach to agriculture using the rainforest itself as their model and have created sustainable agroforestry systems that provide income from diverse sources. Cacao is a key component of many of these systems, but nowhere does it dominate. The farmers who grow cacao are buffered against fluctuations in world cocoa prices by other crops that generate equal or greater income. Their initiatives are homegrown and unsupported by or dependent upon foundations or NGO's. The agroforestry systems that they have developed are world famous among ecologists and economists. Many consider this a model for reforestation of rainforests around the world. Estimates differ among scientists, but it is generally accepted that more than 20% of the Amazon has already been deforested. The principal causes of this deforestation have been clearing for cattle and soybean bean cultivation, timber harvesting to make charcoal and predatory logging. Much of this land has already been abandoned because the nutrients in the soil have been exhausted. It now lies fallow, covered by second growth capoeira. The ranchers, farmers and loggers have moved on and the deforestation continues. It can be argued that if the agroforestry techniques employed by the Tomé-Açu farmers were used to develop this land in the first place, most of the land cleared in the last 20 years would now be entering it's most productive period, generating 10 times or more the income per hectare possible from cattle. This is hindsight, but it can be foresight. Eighty percent of the world's largest rainforest and most precious reserve of biodiversity still remains, and although most of it will eventually be developed, perhaps the farmers of Tomé-Açu have shown us how.