Some Amazonian Forest Products and Initiatives for Adding Value to Them

Nuts
Oil
Essential oils
Flours
Fruits
Handicrafts

J. W. Clay & C. R. Clement

Virtually every product that comes from the forest is first processed within the forest, as well as in nearby urban areas. This value added is what makes the commodity initially marketable, in the sense that it could not be sold without such processing. This is true of rubber, Brazil nuts, babassu, assaí and the other most commonly traded commodities. How and where additional processing could occur to add value locally will vary by commodity.

In this report 19 Amazonian species are discussed that have potential on local, regional, national and international markets, as well as being potential components for agroforestry or forest management systems. In addition, various ways of adding value to these and other types of commodities are suggested. Each example is intended to allow the reader to understand the range of possibilities, in order to think of ways to add value to products not discussed in this report.

Unfortunately, the implementation of these ideas could be difficult for at least three reasons. (1) The politics of who owns the infrastructure, processing plants, etc. that are suggested here will be a political issue. To the extent that states guarantee the loans, they may want to retain ownership. Likewise, local collector and producer groups are not the same as processor groups and both might have legitimate claims to ownership. (2) Cooperatives or other local groups often have no history of cooperative financial endeavors. (3) At this time few local groups have the skills necessary to run such ventures. Thus, any investment in processing or value-added initiatives will succeed only if issues of ownership are thought out ahead of time and if technical assistance is made available to local groups from the beginning.

The species discussed in detail in this report are listed in Table 1, which also provides some basic information on each of the species. Most of the species have multiple uses. Consequently there may be several ways to add value between the tree and the market.

All of these species are used to some degree in Amazônia today. Most have markets on at least a family subsistence basis, the exception being ucuúba, which was once an important oil species but today is only used to make plywood. At the other end of the market spectrum, some of the species already have international markets that could be expanded (eg Brazil nut, Cupuassu fruit pulp, Cumaru and Rosewood essential oils, Assaí palm hearts, Copaíba oil, vegetable ivory nuts.

Table 1. Multipurpose Amazonian species with present and future market potential to serve as components of agroforestry and income-forest management systems.

^a - Yields (of unimproved, unfertilized plants): F - fruit, N - nuts, ol - oil, Ph - palm heart, R - resin.

^b - Uses: B - beverage, C - cosmetic, Ch - charcoal, E - essential oil, F - fruit, H - handicrafts, M - medicinal, N - nut, P - perfume, Ph - palm heart, R - resin, T - timber.

^c - Current markets: F - family, L - local, R - regional, N - national, I - international

Nuts

The Amazonian forest product that is best known is the Brazil nut. Adding value can start by cooperation among collectors. Collector cooperatives which buy and then sell in large volume can increase the value of the nuts from the 2-3% of the New York price to » 10%. The skills that are needed to run such cooperatives are the same that are needed to provide members with less expensive necessities that are purchased in bulk and then sold to members. Eventually, these skills can be used to set up and run local processing facilities, which may allow collectors to increase their gross revenues to » 60% of the New York price for the nuts they gather.

Another alternative way to add value locally is to process or semi-process the product locally. For example, in 1990, the first Brazil nut shelling factory owned by nut collectors in Brazil was financed. The initial cost of the Xapuri plant was US$ 30,000. Subsequent modifications have brought the cost up to » US$ 60,000. In addition to the cost of the plant, the local co-op was provided with the US$ 12,000 annual salary of the plant manager and considerable technical assistance. Since 1990, technical assistance to the plant has exceeded the financial investment in plant infrastructure. [NB: Building plants and processing facilities, regardless of the commodity produced, will often cost less than the technical and financial assistance and training that must accompany them if they are to succeed.] In 1993, the plant could become profitable for the first time if it reaches its overall production goal of 200 metric tons (MT) of nuts and 12 kg of shelled nuts/worker/day.

The return on this-investment has been quite impressive. To date, the factory has shipped 112 MT of nuts to the US. The factory employs some 100 people in Xapuri, making it both the largest employer and the largest taxpayer in the town. The factory loses, through spoilage, only about 15% of the nuts it purchases each year compared to the 25-35% loss by commercial shellers in Manaus and Belém. Perhaps most importantly, the factory has increased the price paid to collectors for nuts in the shell by 40% in 1990 and 100% in 1991. Word of the doubling of the price in 1991 spread quickly in Acre, leading to other gatherers demanding the same price. Consequently, in that year alone, the price paid to all collectors in the state for their nuts increased from an estimated US$ 600,000 to US$ 1.2 million.

Decentralized shelling is another way to add value in the forest, reduce post-harvest losses and reduce transport costs of nuts to market. Decentralized shelling systems are appealing because they cost even less than the small Xapuri-type plants and because they generate income in the forest itself. The main problem with decentralized shelling is maintaining quality control. For this reason, it is essential that a centralized facility be established with each decentralized system to maintain quality control and sort, dry and package for export. Provided a central processing plant exists, small groups can be brought into the system for an investment of only a few thousand US dollars each. A rubbertapper group in Cachoeira, Acre, is working to evaluate this decentralized model.

Amazônia contains numerous other species that furnish edible seeds. Even within the Lecythidaceae there are several as good as the Brazil nut and one (Lecythis pisonis) that is frequently considered to be superior. The piquiá (Clement, this volume) and other Caryocar species provide an edible-seed within a spiny endocarp, which is generally enveloped in an edible oily/starchy mesocarp. All of the palms provide edible seeds as well, although these are not commonly used today. The pendula nut (Sampaio, this volume) and other Couepia species are also edible and of high quality. Even the bacuri is reputed to have an edible seed (Clement, this volume). Any of these could become a new alternative in some part of Amazônia and would be relatively easy to introduce into the world nut market because of similarities with other nuts.

Oil

During the first 3 decades of this century, and again during World War II, Brazil exported some 40 different vegetable oils from Amazônia. These exports declined precipitously with the advent of electricity (and the elimination of candles) and the extensive cultivation of corn and soybeans, which became the most commonly traded vegetable oils on the world market. During World War II, the US and the UK pushed Brazil to encourage the collection of wild rubber in Amazônia at the expense of all other forest products. Consequently, many of the small Brazil nut shelling operations and oil purchasing centers which had dominated local economies since the end of the rubber boom were forced out of business.

Today there is an increased global interest in vegetable oils, particularly those with exotic properties or that can be produced without degrading the environment. Palm oil (Elaeis guineensis), for example, which had been embraced by a number of personal care manufacturers, has begun to lose its appeal as they realize that most palm oil is produced from plantations that have been carved out of rainforests (eg The Body Shop, pers. com.).

The only oil in Brazilian Amazônia that is being produced in quantities sufficient for high volume trade is babassu. Today some 400,000 families in Maranhao and Pará depend on babassu for most of their income during six months of the year. Babassu competes with coconut oil in Brazil for about six months of the year, but it is always at least 25% more expensive than palm kernel oil. Babassu's costs come from the amount of hand labor associated with extracting the oil seed from its shell. Wages are miserably low for shellers - probably not even 25% of the minimum wage.

A prototype mechanical sheller has been developed that produces not only the oil seed, but a number of useful by-products: flour for human consumption; fiber and flour for animal rations; and the hard shell, which makes an extremely low sulphur charcoal. With only a little more development, shelling machines could be produced at about US$ 25,000 with each serving a handful of communities. The machines would cut down on the shelling time and free family members to spend more time collecting babassu. Current estimates indicate that only 20-30% of all babassu is collected each year. With current prices, harvesters could collect in 4 hours what they spent 8 hours collecting and shelling in the past. The net effect would be to reduce labor requirements, reduce overall costs of the oil seeds, and consequently reduce the price for oil itself while increasing overall production and income. Thus, the mechanical sheller would generate employment in gathering and related industries while reducing the price of the finished product, thus making babassu more competitive in national and international markets. See Balick & Pinheiro (this volume) for further details on this initiative.

Another way to add value and generate more income locally with babassu would be to introduce village-level oil presses, each at a cost of about US$ 5,000 to US$ 10,000. Such technology would more than triple the value of the product while reducing its overall weight, volume, and transportation costs. In addition, a by-product would be the cake left after pressing the seed, that could provide good rations locally for chickens and pigs, thus improving the diet of local residents. Currently, the cake that is left after expelling the oil is sold to commercial livestock producers.

Another Amazonian oil crop that could benefit from village-level oil presses is patauá. As Balick (this volume) points out, during World War II this oil was marketed as a substitute for olive oil. With the current interest in unsaturated oils, patauá could find a receptive market. There are thousands of hectares of patauazais in diverse parts of Amazônia which could be sustainably harvested.

Other potential oil crops are andiroba, Brazil nut, copaíba, and ucuúba. Copaíba and andiroba have long been exported from the region. During the 1920's, copaíba was exported primarily for the perfume industry, where it still has a steady but dwindling market (Sampaio, this volume). Andiroba oil reached 350 MT of exports in the 1920's; today, it is not exported, and andiroba trees are being cut for timber because they have no other value (Sampaio, this volume). Ucuúba was important as an industrial oil, especially for soap making. Today it is planted as a timber crop and its annual oil-seed harvest is wasted (Sampaio, this volume).

Essential oils

Anyone who has been to the Ver-O-Peso public market in Belém becomes immediately aware of the wide number of essences and essential oils in Amazônia. Nonetheless, with the exception of a few rosewood products, all personal care products (cosmetics, soaps, perfumes, etc) made from Amazonian essential oils are imported into the region. Some are imported from São Paulo, but most actually come from or via Europe. Thus Amazônia, and Brazil in general, are in the strange situation of producing the raw material, exporting it cheaply, and importing the finished product, usually at great expense.

A vapor essence or essential oil extraction plant would cost about US$ 1 million to set up. Research should be undertaken on the existing essence manufacturing capacity in Brazil and other Amazonian countries to determine what could be done to increase capacity and to improve the quality of the products. This is one area where it may well pay to add value locally by preparing the final product and exporting it as a sustainably produced Amazonian perfume or other personal care product.

There is a huge market for essences, particularly ones that are new and exotic. The cheapest perfume that one might buy contains at least 40 essences; the more expensive ones are even more complex. Essential oils of many of the fruits in the region would find markets in soaps, shampoos, and other personal care products. Likewise, oil extracts from fruits or their seeds would also find markets (e.g., passionfruit, avocado, mango, and a whole host of more exotic, lesser-known species). Companies have taken considerable interest in other seeds as well (eg puxuri and cumaru). Flowers, such as propagated orchids, and various plants could also be used to produce essential oils.

Rosewood is the only essential oil that is now produced for export from Brazil. A good source of linalool, which is used as a fixative by the French perfume industry, rosewood was in such demand that it nearly depleted the species (Sampaio, this volume). Consequently its production costs increased and high prices finally led to its substitution by synthetic linalool for most uses.

Two other Amazonian plants, sacaca and pimenta longa, are good sources of linalool. Sacaca, a bush that grows 2-5 m in height, has leaves that can be harvested after 6-8 months. After drying, the leaves produce 0.8% essential oil by weight. The leaves of sacaca are currently dried and shipped from Manaus directly to Japan where they are processed; no value is being added in Brazil (Venturieri & Ribeiro, this volume). Pimenta longa, a low-growing plant, is not currently exploited commercially. These two could be cultivated rather than harvested from the wild.

Flours

With the exception of manioc or cassava flour, flours are not major traded commodities in Amazônia today. Yet markets for manioc flour could be expanded considerably and other flours could offer considerable revenues to specific groups, diversify sources of income, and make use of presently neglected products or by-products. Pejibaye (peach palm) flour is quite nutritious and has been used as a food staple by indigenous peoples in Amazônia for thousands of years. There is evidence to suggest that peach palm was, in fact, the first domesticated food crop in the Americas (before maize, beans, or manioc).

Peach palm field trials demonstrate that it produces six times as much edible fruit biomass as maize. The ground fruit, which may also be high in oils, makes excellent animal rations (maize and sorghum for chickens and pigs in the region is currently trucked in from the south of the country at high energy costs). In Costa Rica there is a rapidly growing demand for peach palm flour for bread, pasta, cakes, rolls, and so on. At the very least peach palm could be used in Brazil as a highly nutritious substitute for manioc farinha, and since it is a tree crop it does not require the same clearing, planting, and digging up as manioc (Clement, this volume). [In addition to flour, peach palm also has market potential for fresh fruit and for sustainably harvested palm heart or rainforest chips made from the soft heartwood below the palm heart (about twice the volume and weight of the palm heart).]

Jatobá has long been an emergency food in Amazônia. Its large, distinctive seed pods contain a flour that is the consistency of oat flour, and is unique for its aromatic qualities, although this varies somewhat between the three species (Ferreira & Sampaio, this volume). Although its scent would indicate good potential in the personal care products industry, it would probably detract from its acceptability as a food product (it smells a little like carob tastes). If the seeds are collected in a timely fashion, the flour is in good condition - otherwise, it begins to mold. To sell the product in ton or container quantities, more health and safety data would have to be compiled. Despite these factors, there is currently market interest in the product.

Brazil nuts have long been consumed by forest peoples, generally as nuts or pounded into a milky substance to cook vegetables, fish, chicken or meat. Now markets for Brazil nut oil can be developed as well. When the oil is extracted from good nuts, a highly nutritious Brazil nut cake remains (about 50% the weight of the original nut). The cake is about 50% protein, and when mixed with flour it could be used to make bread and pasta higher in protein than meat. (Perhaps it could be used in regional school lunch programs.) The protein in Brazil nuts also appears to be easily digested. Recent studies suggest that it may be particularly good for people who have difficulty digesting protein, such as patients undergoing chemotherapy or those with AIDS. The advantage of the cake over the whole nuts is that most oils have been removed.

Fruits

Tropical fruits, probably more than any other single food category, are associated with Amazônia in the minds of Western consumers. In addition, the tropical fruit juice category is the most; rapidly expanding juice market in the US. As the US population ages, more sophisticated non-alcoholic adult drinks are developing large market niches. It is therefore odd that with all these marketing angles, there is only one functioning fruit processing plant in the entire Brazilian Amazon - the factory at Tome Açu, Pará, built with the assistance of the Japanese government. This initiative exports most of its product to Japanese companies.

To date, fruit processing in Amazônia, whether by hand or machine, has consisted of freezing fruit pulp. Given the high cost of energy needed for freezing and the high costs associated with transporting products that are mostly water, other methods of processing Amazonian fruit should be examined carefully. While frozen fruit pulp is of interest to most manufacturers, the high costs associated with transporting such products from Amazônia have deterred most from their initial desire to produce juices, jams, ice creams, yogurts, and so on.

Three new technologies should be examined and perhaps introduced in Amazônia to overcome the current problems associated with creating markets for the region's fruit.

1) The method of processing frozen fruits should be changed. Instead of only processing the fruits that have the strongest flavors (eg acerola and cupuassu) and thereby obtaining higher prices because they can be diluted more, efforts should be focussed on processing fruit juices with higher brix concentrations (a measurement of natural sugar percentage). For example, by doubling the brix levels, the water content is reduced by half and thus the overall weight and volume is less. In short, it makes no sense to ship frozen water halfway around the world.

2) With aseptic packaging, fruit can be packaged without freezing it. This type of packaging would be good in combination with a fruit processing plant that produces concentrates. Aseptic packaging plants could run 24 hours per day, an especially useful framework for the short, intense fruiting season of many Amazonian species. It could also produce individual containers as: Large as 300 gallons (about one ton; these are the collapsible pallet containers with metal/plastic bags that are used to ship oil). Alternatively, an aseptic plant that produces individual drink boxes could be built. Neither plant requires sterile water during operation, only potable water to clean the equipment during downtime.

Aseptic packaging units have been used all over the world, even off semitrailers in China. MAPS (mobile aseptic processing systems) might be the perfect solution in Amazônia, particularly if they could be mounted onto barges (with a water purification unit) and floated to the sources of the fruit, rather than having the fruits, which often spoil very quickly, taken to the factory. In this scenario, it would be possible to put a container right on the same barge so that it could be filled as the fruit is processed, then taken off by crane at the dock for direct export by boat or tractor-trailer to other parts of the country.

3) Drying. There are ever-increasing markets for dried fruits as well as fruit leathers (dried fruit products made from pulp). The advantage of these items, too, is that they have relatively high values per weight and volume and customers are not paying to ship water. Village-level drying technology is well known. The main necessity for drying fruit is air movement rather than heat. Black plastic, plastic screens, and other inexpensive materials have revolutionized the industry. Village-level dryers in Honduras are capable of producing 10-20 MT of dried fruit per season. They cost US$ 5,000 to US$ 10,000 to construct. Adequately maintained systems can last ten years.

In Amazônia and its buffer areas, five fruits could be processed immediately: asset, buriti, camu-camu, cupuassu, and bacuri. Each of these fruits illustrates the importance of one or more of the above-described processing systems, and each represents both the problems and prospects with development and conservation in the region.

Assaí is found in nearly monocrop stands, both naturally occurring and created, near the mouth of Amazônia and in varying densities along the river all the way to Bolivia (Bovi & Castro, this volume). In 1990, the market for asset fruit, which was entirely domestic, was nearly US$ 100 million. The main market for the fruit is in Belém, where as many as 50,000 liters of unprocessed fruit are sold daily. Harvesters in the area can earn as much as US$ 10 to US$ 15 per hour.

Unfortunately, the Belém market can be supplied only with fruit that is no further away than a single night's boat trip because after 24 hours the fruit spoils. Within an evening's ride of Belém, then, assaí fruit is very valuable. Outside of this radius, however, assaí stands are decimated and sold for palm heart. Attempts to process the fruit locally, with sugar to preserve it, work well technically but do not appear to be acceptable in taste for the Belém market.

A floating processing plant would provide a perfect solution to the processing/transport problem. However, simply introducing the technology without expanding the market would-reduce the price currently paid to collectors, and more likely than not would make the currently productive asset areas less valuable and thus more likely to be developed for housing and vacation spots due to their proximity to the metropolitan area of Belém.

Like assaí in Belém, buriti is the most popular palm fruit in the Iquitos market (Castro, this volume). Most of it is processed into a thick juice. A floating processing plant would be an excellent option to open new areas for exploitation, if the plant actively educated its local collectors about how to harvest buriti non-destructively. Well-processed buriti juice might also have export potential, but only if harvested sustainably.

Camu-camu is extremely high in vitamin C. It, too, is found in monocrop densities in vast areas of the Peruvian Amazon and could be processed in a floating processing plant. However, camu-camu does not currently have a large regional market, although the local Iquitos market is large and expanding rapidly (Chávez, this volume). Again, a floating processing plant could expand production and prepare camu-camu for penetration of other markets, starting with Manaus and Belém, later the rest of Brazil and South America.

Cupuassu represents yet a different challenge and potential for Amazon residents. A close relative of cacao, cupuassu has long been known as a source of cocoa butter, which is particularly high in white chocolate. What is most attractive about cupuassu, however, is the distinctive flavored pulp that surrounds the seeds (Venturieri, this volume). Because it is a strong flavor it is mixed into ice cream at a ratio of 1-to-20. Thus, although the fruit is expensive, a little goes a long way.

The fact that cupuassu is a valuable crop and that demand within Brazil is growing rapidly explains why so many government officials are promoting its planting and why so many forest residents, colonists, and mid-sized landowners are planting it throughout Amazônia. Unfortunately, no one is as yet actively funding processing plants or the creation of markets for the crop. While most plants begin to produce in 3-5 years, only one centrifugal processing plant exists to process the fruit. Most of the areas with large plantings have no processing capacity, and although the fruit will last several days after harvesting, it: is likely that a few wealthy individuals will gain control of the processing and thus the fruit's market. This scenario is likely to keep forest residents impoverished and forests endangered.

Cupuassu represents a problem typical of planting-based development programs. Too little attention is given to processing and marketing (other crops with similar problems are coffee, cacao, cashew and annatto/urucuum). A village-level aseptic processing plant would cost about US$ 30,000; larger, regional plants could cost more than US$ 500,000.

Like cupuassu, bacuri has a strong, distinctively flavored pulp around the seeds (Clement, this volume). Frequently one or more of the seeds will abort, but the pulp will still be produced. This seedless section is highly prized in Amazônia and has potential for drying and more ample marketing. The rest of the pulp could be treated aseptically for shipping.