By Idesam
Translated by Felipe Sá
Photo: Henrique Saunier

Last tuesday (12/17) Idesam brokered the delivery of the first effectively tracked batch of Copaíba from the riverine communities of Apuí’s (AM) region to a company that works selling natural products. Over 600 kilograms of Copaíba carry the new collective brand which was specially created for products of the Amazon’s cooperativism: Inatú. In addition to the new brand, the Copaíba that is being sold comes with a QR code that gathers all the information about its origin, the Aripuanã-Guariba Agroextractivist Settlement Project.

The first sale using QR code had already been made to the same company but during the pilot phase of the ‘Cidades Florestais’ (Forest Cities, in English) Project, which is responsible for the technical support and management of the initiative. This is just one of the sales of a contract signed with the company to supply Copaíba, what was only possible thanks to a restructuring work of the Aripuanã-Guariba Agroextractivist Association (ASAGA, in Portuguese) carried out by Idesam and the local community.

With these and other contracts signed by the association, which is now structured, the region’s extractivists can get a fairer price for their products. Each kilogram had an appreciation of over 70% if compared to what was previously practiced by the local middlemen.

All the information made available by the QR code is provided by the producers themselves, who can submit data while still in the field using the ‘Cidades Florestais’ application. This is kept registered in the system and uploaded as soon as the devide has access to the Internet. Idesam was responsible for managing the development of the application, training the association’s team that receives the collected batches and teaching the producers how to use the application.

Besides showing the source of the product, the use of the ‘Cidades Florestais’ application also helps producers to have a better control of their expenses by registering the costs of each step of the harvest.

“All of this ensures the origin of the product, shows that it comes from an association of traditional producers and from an Agroextractivist Settlement Project which is being conserved. This is a very important information for a company because it can also pass it on to its customers”, says André Vianna, coordinator of the ‘Cidades Florestais’ Project.

About the ‘Cidades Florestais’ Project

The ‘Cidades Florestais’ Project began in 2018 aiming at promoting the forest economy of municipalities in the interior of the Amazon. This takes place through supporting forest, timber and vegetable oil production chains of communities and families from the following municipalities: Apuí, Carauari, Itapiranga, São Sebastião do Uatumã, Silves, Lábrea and Boa Vista do Ramos (check ou the map at the bottom of the screen).

The project’s actions are carried out by Idesam with support from the Amazon Fund/BNDES and, currently, 14 social organizations participate in these actions concerning: Implementation of digital platform and application to support the management of community production; Preparation of Forest Management Plans and technical assistance until the commercialization of production; Implementation of new forestry equipment and machinery; Installation of the ‘Rede de Óleos da Amazônia’ (Oils from the Amazon Network, in English) anticipating the construction of two new mini vegetable oil extraction plants and structural and managerial support to three other existing plants.

For more photos, check out our Flickr: https://flic.kr/s/aHsmK6Z3K3

Text and photo by Henrique Saunier
Translated by Felipe Sá

For many years, families from the communities of the Aripuanã-Guariba Agroextractivist Settlement Project (PAE, in Portuguese), from the region of Apuí (Amazonas), have been fighting to promote the increasingly harder work of extracting the Copaíba oil. With support from the Floresta em Pé public notice and resources from the Amazon Fund, Idesam has been working together with these communities from the organization of the oil’s supply chain to its commercialization, ensuring a fairer price and increasing the income of associated families in almost 50%.

Widely used by the pharmaceutical and cosmetic industries, the liquid has already been sold by the producers for R$1.50/liter, mainly due to local middlemen. Thanks to the work carried out to organize the association, to train good extractivist practices and to support the logistics, Idesam noticed that the extractivists were able to earn 74% more than they used to, besides overcoming the production target by 169%. Altogether, over 3 tons of Copaíba oil were extracted with the Institute’s support.

Raylton Pereira, one of Idesam’s technicians in Apuí, highlighted that the project was able to provide important benefits to the community members, as well as expanding the producers’ knowledge regarding prices, loss calculations, management plans and techniques to serve foreign markets. “Our new goals are to increase the diversity of non-timber forest products, to capitalize resources for raw material and to use the Cidades Florestais App”, said Pereira.

The project funded by the Amazon Fund benefits 11 families in 5 communities from the Aripuanã-Guariba PAE: Vila Batista; Pro Jó 1; Pro Jó 2; Aruanã; and Bela Vista do Guariba. These communities are far from the municipality’s main office, they don’t have schools, health centers or community structure. This reality, together with the challenges related to the Copaíba, makes this activity increasingly rare among young people, something that the project can also try to help change.

This too is a challenge for the current president of the Aripuanã-Guariba Agroextractivist Association (ASAGA), Rosivaldo Góes. After learning the craft with his father, who also works with Copaíba, ten years ago, he keeps the tradition. He is one of the main characters of the video “Copaíba: The oil that helps keep the forest standing” (available in Portuguese), which Idesam released this week.

“We improved techniques, but they remain the same as years ago. My father used to tell me what to do, to cap the tree, so we got better and better. What changed a lot was the difficulty, because areas that have Copaíba got increasingly distant”, explains Góes about one of the effects of over 40 years of uncontrolled extraction.

The audiovisual material which is already available on all of Idesam’s social media shows a bit of the work carried out by the Institute with the communities during this period. This includes studies on Copaíba pricing, technical support to producers, business plan and finance workshops, in addition to forwarding samples for laboratory examination.