Indigenous Wai Wai seek markets for Brazil nuts without middlemen

SÃO JOÃO DA BALIZA, Brazil — Levi da Silva Kaykûwû smiles as he explains the wealth that Brazil nuts have generated for his neighborhood.

“We’ve been capable of purchase chainsaws, aluminum-made boats and motors,” the 48-year-old Wai Wai Indigenous chief tells Mongabay as he sits in his village by the banks of the Anauá River.

Accumulating, cooking, consuming and promoting the nuts of the Bertholletia excelsa tree is embedded within the tradition of the Wai Wai individuals, who reside throughout the forested interiors of northern Brazil and neighboring Guyana.

Right now, Brazil nuts account for the principle money revenue, in addition to the idea of the delicacies and food regimen, for the 350 households that reside within the 406,000-hectare (1-million-acre) Wai Wai Indigenous Territory, which is blessed with an abundance of Brazil nut bushes or castanheiras, in Roraima state.

After many years of promoting uncooked Brazil nuts to native middlemen, who would pay the bottom value in the marketplace, the Wai Wai neighborhood affiliation, in partnership with numerous nonprofit organizations, started reaching out to nationwide meals corporations for higher costs with mounted contracts.

In 2021, Wickbold, one in all Brazil’s largest bread corporations, purchased some 100 metric tons of Brazil nuts from the Wai Wai — their complete manufacturing that 12 months. Then, in 2022, Wickbold scaled up the partnership and purchased 143 metric tons, the corporate instructed Mongabay in an announcement.

By promoting on to Wickbold, the Wai Wai earned roughly$1.50 per kilogram (about 70 cents a pound) of Brazil nuts, twice as a lot because the middlemen paid.

This larger revenue helps the Wai Wai protect their huge territory, which is 5 instances the dimensions of New York Metropolis and lined in lush rainforest cover.

Middlemen reap the benefits of the Wai Wai’s relative isolation from city facilities and provide to gather their Brazil nut manufacturing on the most important villages, typically paying for the annual harvest prematurely. By doing so, they take away the facility of the Indigenous individuals to barter higher costs and enormously scale back their margin of revenue.

Lately, the territory has been more and more focused by unlawful loggers, land grabbers and gold miners, in response to paperwork and testimonies seen and heard by Mongabay.

The unhealthy information was compounded in 2023 when Wickbold ended its settlement with the group, and the Wai Wai have been as soon as once more pressured to promote their Brazil nuts for a lower cost to middlemen.

“In 2023, Wickbold didn’t full the acquisition with them because of the restructuring of the assist group that advises the Wai Wai individuals,” the corporate instructed Mongabay in an emailed assertion, including that it was “open to exchanging experiences and resuming enterprise.”

Wickbold has related Brazil nut buy agreements with different Indigenous and conventional communities within the Calha Norte area of Pará state, the Terra do Meio conservation space within the Xingu River area of Pará, and the Negro River area of Amazonas state.

Altogether, the corporate stated its agreements have contributed to the conservation of 6.7 million hectares (16.6 million acres) of Amazon forest over eight years.

For consultants, the contract issues of the Wai Wai of Roraima are typical of the challenges confronted by conventional communities in accessing extra profitable markets for the much-hyped bioeconomy of the Brazilian Amazon. A 2023 research by the World Sources Institute and the New Local weather Economic system discovered that the bioeconomy may add $8.3 billion to the Brazilian Amazon’s GDP annually. Nevertheless, attaining that potential is held again by logistical and authorized difficulties.

“The largest bottleneck is with the ability to give the standard to the product throughout the territory, which is a market requirement,” Jakeline Ramos, an professional in rainforest sustainable manufacturing and director of manufacturing chain growth at Brazilian conservation nonprofit Imazon, tells Mongabay. “In any other case, they’re left within the palms of middlemen.”

“That’s why the Wai Wai labored for under two months gathering the Brazil nuts in 2023,” she says. “It wasn’t paying off as a result of middlemen have been providing a really low value. So they’re making an attempt to take a position and empower their neighborhood to not rely upon this type of purchaser.”

For the Wai Wai in Roraima, the gathering season begins in Could and lasts three to 4 months. Throughout this time, households head into the rainforest to load their boats with sacks of Brazil nuts.

Then a 12-hour boat journey is required to maneuver their manufacturing to a warehouse at their most important village of Anauá. After unloading, they head up the river once more for a brand new assortment spherical.

“Prior to now, we used to hold the nuts in a canoe by rowing, it was very heavy,” says Wai Wai chief Kaykûwû. “Right now, every household has its personal massive boat to hold quite a lot of nuts and each receives [money] in response to their manufacturing.”

Difficult market

Tomás Tamaxi stares up at a towering 40-meter (130-foot) Brazil nut tree.

“A tall Brazil nut tree, like this one, reveals that the world is wholesome, so we will make sure that we will plant different crops close by, like banana or cassava, and it’ll develop too,” he says.

After ending college in Roraima’s capital, Boa Vista, Tamaxi returned to his village within the Wai Wai Indigenous Territory to affix the leaders who arrange and intermediate the Brazil nut gross sales. The elders are getting ready him to guide the subsequent technology of Wai Wai individuals, specializing in industrializing their manufacturing within the close to future.

“The karaiwá [white people] act just for cash, they don’t take into consideration the long run,” he says. “There’s no want to chop the forest down just like the karaiwá do.”

The turning level for the Wai Wai individuals to attempt to promote on to nationwide meals corporations got here after creating their affiliation of Brazil nut producers in 2018.

With the affiliation, they gathered the households, centralized the manufacturing and obtained certification for sustainable manufacturing that corporations must label their merchandise as “environmentally pleasant.”

As a substitute of delivering uncooked Brazil nuts when promoting to middlemen, they wash and clear the nuts after which bag them into 15-kg (33-lb) sacks.

The primary goal proper now to boost their manufacturing and gross sales is to construct a bigger warehouse to retailer extra Brazil nuts. The Wai Wai constructed their present wood storage hut, which might retailer round 30 metric tons of Brazil nuts, with the assistance of an NGO 5 years in the past.

“It’ll fall down inside just a few years,” Tamaxi says. “We’re planning to make use of subsequent 12 months’s harvest to construct a brand new one made out of concrete, however we have to companion with corporations to manage to pay for to take action.”

The subsequent step that would assure higher contracts and higher earnings can be peeling the nuts, packaging them in smaller retail portions, and labeling them as being from a preserved Indigenous land, stated Imazon’s Ramos, who has been engaged on socioenvironmental initiatives for 19 years.

“It’s a difficult market, extra inflexible,” she says. “You need to certify the origin of the product after which add worth with extra industrialized processes and certificates of fine observe.”

In response to Ramos, a number of Indigenous communities in Roraima and Pará state are already present process this coaching.

Promoting on to massive corporations requires the Wai Wai individuals to arrange their administration and logistics to ship the Brazil nuts, which is one thing they nonetheless must work on.

Land of Brazil nut bushes

Geraldo Panahruwi is the founding father of the Anauá village, a settlement of wood huts unfold alongside the banks of the eponymous river, the place 74 Wai Wai households reside and the place Mongabay was invited late final 12 months.

Right now, at 62 years previous, he says he can keep in mind when Brazilian authorities brokers contacted his father within the late Nineteen Seventies in regards to the demarcation of their individuals’s land.

“Prior to now, the Wai Wai labored for the white individuals who collected the Brazil nuts,” he says. “We instructed them the place the bushes have been so they might acquire them.”

When brokers from Funai, the federal company for Indigenous affairs, arrived within the area, “My father realized that the Brazil nut tree, in addition to offering meals to us, might be a supply of revenue for his technology and people to return,” Panahruwi says. “So he demanded as Indigenous land the area with essentially the most nut bushes.”

After many years of promoting completely to middlemen and expelling non-Indigenous individuals from the territory, Panahruwi went to Boa Vista in 2007 for a workshop, the place he observed that some corporations have been in search of merchandise extracted from the rainforest with sustainable dealing with.

Panahruwi approached Brazilian businesses concerned about educating sustainable practices and held a workshop to generate curiosity from Wai Wai nut-collecting households.

“Then it began. We offered for the primary time to an Ecuadorian firm in 2010, however it was a one-time deal and we couldn’t discover different patrons. The subsequent 12 months we needed to promote it at a lower cost to middlemen once more,” he says.

Taking part in the lengthy sport

Right now, gathering Brazil nuts is a decentralized exercise for the Wai Wai. Every household has a predefined space to reap and chooses how lengthy and intense their assortment interval shall be, in response to their monetary wants.

Leaders like Kaykûwû and Panahruwi work as negotiators with the surface world and provide coaching on gathering, washing and storing the nuts.

A small proportion of the revenue from every household’s harvest goes into a typical fund, used to enhance the village’s infrastructure, reminiscent of shopping for and repairing diesel-fueled energy mills and photo voltaic panels, or renovating the Anauá neighborhood faculty.

After 5 years of this technique, every Wai Wai household has been capable of purchase an aluminum boat and outboard motor, a chainsaw for the household farm, and a motorcycle to drive the 40 kilometers (25 miles) to the closest metropolis, São João da Baliza.

“We’re targeted now on getting secure, uninterrupted electrical energy so we will attempt to construct a little bit processing plant for the Brazil nuts in our village,” Kaykûwû says.

Since President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva took workplace in 2023, there’s been hope of elevated investments to learn Indigenous and different conventional peoples and the bioeconomy, with France pledging to take a position 1 billion euros ($1.1 billion) throughout President Emmanuel Macron’s current go to to Brazil.

Earlier this 12 months, the Brazilian authorities launched an official seal for Indigenous merchandise in an effort to stimulate sustainable manufacturing from conventional communities.

In the meantime, the nation’s Export and Funding Promotion Company, ApexBrasil, is making an attempt to extend exports of Brazil nuts to higher-value markets reminiscent of america and the European Union, the company instructed Mongabay in an e mail.

Bolivia and Peru are Brazil’s most important opponents within the Brazil nut manufacturing chain, the company stated. Prior to now, they accounted for nearly half of Brazil’s uncooked nut exports.

Right now, ApexBrasil stated, with the rise in Brazilian competitiveness and an more and more strong sector when it comes to the availability of wholesome and protected nuts, the nation has expanded the proportion of its exports that goes to closing client markets.

“In 2023, 34% of Brazilian exports went to america, 10% to China and eight% to Australia. Collectively, Peru and Bolivia collectively obtained 15% of Brazilian gross sales,” the company wrote in an e mail.

Whereas acknowledging the present increase of initiatives and corporations in search of sustainably-harvested merchandise like Brazil nuts to promote to shoppers domestically and overseas, the Wai Wai regard their actions, above all, as cultural and collective.

“We’re sending our kids to universities, and a few are about to graduate and are available again to assist us with the enterprise,” Kaykûwû says whereas wanting on the black waters of the Anauá River.

“My father’s technology secured the land, my technology is making an attempt to create higher work for us. Little by little, we’re enhancing our lives. I’m optimistic about our future.”

This story was supported by the Rainforest Journalism Fund (RJF) in partnership with the Pulitzer Heart.

Banner picture: “Right now, every household has its personal massive boat to hold quite a lot of nuts and each receives [money] in response to their manufacturing,” says Levi da Silva Kaykûwû, 48, chief of the Anauá village. Picture by Avener Prado.

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