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Jun232015

Açaí Berry Brazil’s Boon

Tuesday, June 23, 2015 at 8:30AM

A formerly obscure berry from the Amazon rainforest in Brazil has become a global marketing success. The açaí berry – a dark, small fruit similar in appearance to blueberries – has surged in popularity around the world and brought newfound prosperity to poor communities.

The açaí berry (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Açaí_Palm) has seen its popularity take off because of its purported antioxidant properties (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antioxidants). It is marketed as a way to reduce cancer and heart disease, although hype has sometimes portrayed the benefits to be higher than scientific studies have found. But whatever the truth of the berry’s overall health-giving properties, it has become an economic success story in Brazil.

A rapid success story – açaí was first exported from Brazil after 2000 – the berry is now sought by health-conscious consumers and the diet industry for its antioxidant properties and slimming effects.

Harvesting the berries is providing poor communities with an alternative source of income in the Amazon rainforest (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_Rainforest). And the successful marketing and selling of the berries offers a good example to others trying to improve profits for agricultural products from the South.

Prior to its global popularity, a bowl of açaí berries was a staple for poor families in some parts of Brazil. The pulp is traditionally eaten as a side dish. It is a common sight in Brazil to see street vendors or shops selling crushed açaí pulp. Trendier places in Rio de Janerio sell sweetened açaí berry smoothies. In Belem, the capital of Para State, two ice cream chains sell açaí flavoured ice cream. A white and purple swirl of açaí and tapioca is a common favourite. Other treats include açaí candy and açaí tarts in bakeries.

Some claim the taste of the berry when sweetened is earthy, while left in a natural state it is more grassy. The berry grows wild on palm trees lining rivers or on farms.

Orisvaldo Ferreira de Souza is an açaí farmer on the island of Itanduba, an hour by boat from the town of Cametá, population 117,000. Açaí harvesting has become the main livelihood for many families in the area. Orisvaldo harvests açaí from 8,000 palm trees on a 14 hectare farm.

“Two or three years ago, we had a lot of trouble selling the product,” he told the New York Times. “We had to bring it to town, and sometimes we came back without selling it.”

But times have changed and the buyers now come to the farmers.
“Just yesterday, six buyers came by,” he said. “We sold 10 baskets each to two of them.”

At the CAMTA cooperative (http://www.camta.com.br/companyE.htm) in Tomé-Açu, a town with a population of 40,000, the berry is a significant source of income. The co-op’s director, Ivan Saiki, notes the boost to local incomes: “Before the boom, the harvest came and the açaí was worth practically nothing. Before, nobody had television, nobody had a motorized canoe. Now many have their own electricity at home. It’s greatly improved the life of the river communities.”

The co-op has a fruit pulp processing factory to improve the profits for the farmers and, by controlling quality, raise the reputation for their products. In order to avoid over-dependence on one commodity, the co-op members grow many other fruits as well, including papaya, mango, lemons, and local favourites abrico, uxi and bacuri.

Another initiative is Sambazon (Sustainable Management of the Brazilian Amazon) (www.sambazon.com). This small company, founded in 2000, combines business with a partnership to ensure local communities benefit from the berry’s success story. Sambazon buys the berries from over 10,000 people in the Amazon and is certified organic (http://www.organicfarmers.org.uk). Through its SAP (Sustainable Amazon Partnership), over 1,100 local family farmers are able to harvest açaí berries as an alternative income source to logging, cattle ranching and monoculture plantations – all of which are threats to the Amazon rainforest. The company sells a range of products, from sorbet to supplements to juices and energy drinks. It also uses athletes to promote the products and encourage a healthy lifestyle.

Other companies like Açaí Roots (www.acairoots.com) – founded by three Brazilians in Rio de Janerio – also associate the product with an overall healthy lifestyle. It sells drinks, smoothies, energy shots and liquid concentrate. Founded in 2005, it is selling the concept of the healthy Brazilian lifestyle and proudly claims its founders “were born and raised on açaí.”

By David South, Development Challenges, South-South Solutions

Published: May 2010

Development Challenges, South-South Solutions was launched as an e-newsletter in 2006 by UNDP's South-South Cooperation Unit (now the United Nations Office for South-South Cooperation) based in New York, USA. It led on profiling the rise of the global South as an economic powerhouse and was one of the first regular publications to champion the global South's innovators, entrepreneurs, and pioneers. It tracked the key trends that are now so profoundly reshaping how development is seen and done. This includes the rapid take-up of mobile phones and information technology in the global South (as profiled in the first issue of magazine Southern Innovator), the move to becoming a majority urban world, a growing global innovator culture, and the plethora of solutions being developed in the global South to tackle its problems and improve living conditions and boost human development. The success of the e-newsletter led to the launch of the magazine Southern Innovator.

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Southern Innovator Issue 1: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=Q1O54YSE2BgC&dq=southern+innovator&source=gbs_navlinks_s

Southern Innovator Issue 2: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=Ty0N969dcssC&dq=southern+innovator&source=gbs_navlinks_s

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Southern Innovator Issue 4: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=9T_n2tA7l4EC&dq=southern+innovator&source=gbs_navlinks_s

Southern Innovator Issue 5: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=6ILdAgAAQBAJ&dq=southern+innovator&source=gbs_navlinks_s

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West African Chocolate Success Story

Tuesday, June 23, 2015 at 8:22AM

A Ghanaian chocolate company has become a big success in the United Kingdom and shown how it is possible to develop and market a high-quality product grown in West Africa. While the chocolate bars are manufactured in the Netherlands, the cooperative that owns the company initiated the push into producing a mass-market chocolate brand – and shares in the profits.

The Divine chocolate brand is available in shops and supermarkets across Britain and is the product of the Kuapa Kokoo (http://www.kuapakokoo.com/) cocoa farmers cooperative. The Divine brand was launched in the U.K. in 1998 as the first Fairtrade (http://www.fairtrade.org.uk) chocolate bar aimed at the mass market. Previously, most Fairtrade chocolate was made for high-end customers.

Apart from the chocolate bars, the co-op also sells its cocoa butter to The Body Shop (http://www.thebodyshop.co.uk/_en/_gb/index.aspx), a chain of natural beauty retailers.

In 1997, at the co-op’s annual general meeting, members decided to create a mass-market chocolate bar of their own. Ambitiously, they did not want to just be a small, niche-market chocolate bar. They wanted to take on the big brands. They set up The Day Chocolate Company in 1998 and received support from a collection of international charities, aid agencies and businesses.

The Chocolate Company is structured to have two members of the co-op on its board of directors, with one out of four yearly board meetings held in Ghana. As shareholders, the farmers also receive a share of the profits of chocolate sales. Britain’s chocolate market is worth £4 billion a year (US $6 billion) and the country has hundreds of chocolate brands, making competition for customers fierce. The Divine range of chocolate has been designed to match U.K. market tastes.

Ghana has an excellent reputation for the quality of its cocoa beans and has been growing cocoa since it was first brought to the country from Equatorial Guinea in 1878 by Tetteh Quarshie (http://www.ghanaweb.com/GhanaHomePage/people/pop-up.php?ID=128).

Kuapa Kokoo’s success story has its origins in responding to the structural adjustment programmes (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Structural_adjustment) which started liberalizing Ghana’s cocoa market in 1993.

The lock the government had on selling cocoa to the Cocoa Marketing Company had been lifted. Now the opportunity was there for others to sell to the Marketing Company and some farmers decided to form a cooperative, Kuapa Kokoo – “the best of the best”. They wanted to get a better price for the cocoa and to improve working conditions and lives of the pickers.

The cooperative does all the processing of the cocoa and delivers it to market. One of the great advantages for the farmers is the honest weighing of the beans – something previous buying agents would cheat doing. By creating a more efficient and fair process, greater savings are made on the price paid for the beans and this is passed on to the co-op’s members.

The farmers are also trained to do tasks like weighing and bagging the cocoa, removing the need for outside help. Every year the farmers receive cash bonuses based on the co-op’s profits and any efficiencies made.

With this success, Kuapa Kokoo grew and now has more than 40,000 members spread over 1,300 villages.

The co-op offers various services to the farmers including a credit union to help with finances. There are also 33 Research and Development Officers employed by the co-op to oversee training and election.

The number of women farmers has grown over the years, from 13 percent to 30 percent.

Extra income-generating skills are encouraged for the women farmers as well. One project is to make soap from the potash produced from burnt cocoa husks. Women have also been given machines to crack palm kernels for cooking oil.

Comfort Kumeah, a 62-year-old co-op farmer, lives in the village of Mim in the Ashanti region. A former teacher for 39 years, she inherited 20 acres of land from her husband’s family.

“Each farmer has a passbook to record weight and payment. In the whole of Ghana, only Kuapa Kokoo … is certified Fairtrade,” she told the Sunday Times.

“I was voted chair of the farmers’ trust and national secretary for the union; once a year I attend a conference to vote on how the Fairtrade premium is spent. Last year we bought a palm-nut crusher and we sell the red oil on the market.”

“Before, I was always cheated. Purchasing clerks would come and weigh the beans and you never knew if their scales were correct, as no one checked them. Some embezzled the money instead of paying it to the farmers.”

“Owning this company has given cocoa farmers a voice for the first time.”

Kuapa Kokoo sells around 1,000 tonnes of cocoa every year to the European Fairtrade market (http://www.etfam.com/index2.php). This has many advantages for sellers if they meet certain conditions. These conditions include health and safety requirements and democratic decision making. If they are met, the producers receive a guaranteed price for their goods and long-term trading contracts. This means a stable price despite market fluctuations. With a stable price, it is easier to plan and save money.

Ghanaian cocoa has a good international reputation and trades at a higher price because of this. Cocoa once made up 66 percent of Ghana’s foreign exchange, but is now down to 35-40 percent as the economy has diversified into areas like information technology.

Cocoa is usually grown on small family farms in Ghana. Farmers also grow crops like plantain to provide food for the family. Around 1.6 million people are involved in growing cocoa and its business in Ghana. Cocoa trees grow to 15 metres in height and take three to four years to start producing a crop. An entire year’s worth of a tree’s crop can make three large chocolate bars.

A tree can produce two crops a year. Each cocoa pod produces around 40 seeds.

“A cocoa farmer’s life is hard,” admits Comfort. “In the lean season, we have no income. Also, cocoa is controlled by climate. Drought followed by too much rain causes fungus and rot, and then every farmer is poor.”

“I have saved money for my children’s education but my own needs are few: clothes, soap and toothpaste. Generally, you know, women are strong. Last year more women than men were voted onto the Kuapa Kokoo national executive and now hold some of the most senior positions.”