- Far from international forums and economical centers, locals in one of the Amazon deforestation hotspots seek alternatives to agribusiness and gold mines.
- Mongabay went to Pará state’s southwest and found examples of people struggling to keep sustainable initiatives in a region dominated by soy, cattle, gold and logging.
- Despite the bioeconomy buzz, people working on the ground say they miss support from banks and public administrations.
ALTAMIRA, Brazil — Bartolomeu Moraes, better known as Brasília, was a peasant leader and trade unionist in Brazil involved in a long, bloody land war. In 2002, he was killed after years of opposing powerful local ranchers along the BR-163 highway area, located in the Brazilian state of Pará.
“He saw a lot of land with few people and wanted people to be able to use the land for family farming,” Raimunda Rodrigues, better known as Mariana, told Mongabay while walking along the dirt road that leads to her house.
After his death, the Brazilian state finally caved in and created a sustainable settlement (known as PDS in Portuguese) in 2005, honoring Brasília. Mariana got a piece of land inside the 19,800 hectares (49,000 acres) of PDS Brasília, an area bigger than Brooklyn in New York, which by then had belonged to a single rancher.
The federal land reform agency, INCRA, designed the settlement for 500 families that would practice family farming on their plots while collectively using a large area of standing forest to extract forest fruits and nuts.
However, 19 years later, the scenario is quite different. Without support from public administration, only 200 families remain on their plots. Many of them were forced to sell the land to large ranchers (which is illegal), who gradually regained territorial supremacy. According to the civil society network MapBiomas, more than two-thirds (75%) of the settlement has already been converted into pasture for cattle ranching, which is forbidden inside a PDS.
The same dynamics endure beyond the PDS borders. Spread over Altamira and Novo Progresso municipalities, the BR-163 region is one of the most deforested of the Amazon and has a history of violent land disputes. In 2019, it was the stage of the Day of Fire, when a coordinated group of ranchers set fire to several places to make room for pasture and take advantage of support by former President Jair Bolsonaro, who slashed environmental regulations in Brazil.
First colonized in the 1980s by migrants in search of gold and timber, now the region is also an agribusiness hub, with cattle ranching and soy plantations advancing farther into the forest. “We are in the agribusiness corridor. We need to somehow hold on to the land so that it doesn’t become a farmer’s land again,” said Mariana, a rare example of resistance in one of the Amazon’s deforestation hotspots.
In a 2.5-hectare (6-acre) area, she produces cacao — whose beans are sold to chocolate producers in Altamira city center — and other Amazonian fruits like pequi (Caryocar brasiliense), acerola (Malpighia emarginata) and açaí (Euterpe oleracea). The family complements its income by selling eggs, chickens, bananas and cassava in the nearby markets and fairs. “We make our living from this land,” Mariana said.
Now, she is trying to persuade her neighbors to do the same as a way of preserving nature, increasing income and keeping the families on the land. “We want to show the settlers that they don’t have to just plant grass for cattle.”
Mariana created a women’s association in the PDS, gathering 33 settlers, some of whom had already produced their fruits. The main challenge, however, is to get the money to build an agroindustry to process and then freeze the pulps. “We’re worried that we’ll have the raw materials and nowhere to process them,” she said.
To pay for the equipment, the association has been bidding for social funds from NGOs and private companies like mining industries, which need to invest in these initiatives to compensate for their environmental impact.
Despite all the propaganda about bioeconomy — an expression designed to describe sustainable activities while protecting the standing forest — private and public banks haven’t been the best partners of the PDS’ women. According to Mariana, getting financing to raise cattle is easier than if you want to set up a sustainable project. “So what do you call a bioeconomy? It is just in the name,” she said.
Lack of financing is one of many issues. The settlers’ gardens and orchards are often affected by the pesticides dumped by ranchers’ airplanes, provoking massive losses. A few years ago, Mariana received a death threat after denouncing one of these farmers. “The way things are going, we need to be very strong, very persistent, to survive in family farming,” she said.
Bioeconomy with no glamor
Bioeconomy has been increasingly discussed in international forums as a way of generating income for traditional communities while preserving forests and contributing to fighting climate change. The so-called “future economy” has originated new startups working not only with Amazon fruits and nuts but also with reforestation and carbon credits. A study concluded that the Amazon’s bioeconomy could create $8 billion each year.
However, bioeconomy is often much less glamorous on the ground — especially in highly conflicted areas like BR-163.
Miguel Mernitzki, for example, started producing honey three years ago in Castelo dos Sonhos, a district of Altamira. He followed the steps of his father, who worked with bees in the south of Brazil decades ago, before migrating to the north like many other small farmers. “The activity is kind of in the blood,” said the 53-year-old man, while cautiously observing the movement around the 12 bee boxes he has on his late father’s property.
However, that’s not the only reason why he became a beekeeper. “To start a soybean plantation, you must have millions of reais. To work in gold mining, you must also have a lot of money to buy machinery. To be a logger, you have to have a truck, a tractor and an area to harvest wood,” he explained. “The bee, on the other hand, is something you grow slowly, and it pays for its work.”
The Mernitzki family came to Mato Grosso state in the 1980s to work in the gold mines. From that time, he remembers being repeatedly infected by malaria, an infectious disease that can lead to death. In 1993, he and his wife came to Pará to work in commerce.
Today, the couple rents chairs and tables to local parties and runs a clothing store where Mernitzki’s honey is also for sale. The activity is currently an extra income, but Mernitzki dreams big. “The plan in the future is to increase the number of bee boxes and set up a honey house, sending the product to other states and perhaps even exporting it,” said the beekeeper, who produced 110 kilograms (242.5 pounds) of honey in 2024.
Like many others in the region, he complains about environmental operations against illegal mining and deforestation, which became more frequent since President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva took office in 2023. According to him, the federal government shows up only to penalize but never to support projects like his. “There is a lack of support from both the government and the private sector. We’re on our own.”
From cattle to açaí
For larger entrepreneurs, getting financing seems more feasible. It is the case of Gustavo Grotto, a rancher who got a loan from the Amazon Bank to develop an açaí business at the margins of BR-163.
Owner of a 710-hectare (1750-acre) farm, Grotto decided eight years ago to sell part of his cattle herd and convert 50 hectares (123 acres) of degraded pasture into açaí plantations. The initiative surprised Grotto’s neighbors.
“Whenever you do something innovative, you’re called crazy. Now that things are more established, many people come to me wanting to plant too,” the farmer said while showing the few bunches of açaí left over from the last harvest.
Grotto processes the fruit in a facility that produces 1,500 liters (396 gallons) of açaí per day, which he sells in a store at the borders of the highway and nearby supermarkets. He hopes to expand his production with time by buying açaí from other local suppliers. “If my plant does well, I can encourage others to plant too. Then we can guarantee the purchase and make things happen.”
Originating from a southern family that migrated to the Amazon, Grotto went to São Paulo to study agriculture engineering and then spent three years traveling around the world and working on organic farms. Once back to Pará, however, he favored a more traditional way of growing, based on monoculture and including the use of pesticides in the açaí plantations.
The products are applied to palm trees through the irrigation system, in a technique known as fertirrigation. “No cattle farmer, gold miner or logger is going to stop doing that if fruit growing doesn’t give an economic return,” said the farmer, who also said he doesn’t believe it would be possible to have a large-scale business using organic and agroforestry methods. “We use a mix of conventional and ecological techniques, aiming for the economic, social and environmental sustainability of the project.”
Besides açaí, Grotto dedicates smaller areas to other Amazonian fruits like cajá (Spondias mombin), murici (Byrsonima crassifolia), bacuri (Platonia insignis) and camu-camu (Myrciaria dubia), where he doesn’t use pesticides. The farmer employs 10 people in the orchard, while only one person can handle his 100-times-larger cattle ranching area.
Besides generating more job opportunities, he explained that fruit production is also a way of making money from smaller properties. “For small and medium-sized properties, fruit growing is a real alternative for sustainability in the Amazon,” he said. “But you have to take a good look at all the challenges, such as technical assistance, the high cost of production and the logistics of our region.”
Drought and fire outbreaks, which hit the Amazon hard in 2023 and 2024, have imposed an extra challenge. Reduced rainfall hurt açaí productivity and forced Grotto to spend more on irrigation, while the smoke from the fires affected the taste of the fruit.
“The açaí tasted smoky,” he said. “We’re alone in this fruit-growing project, most of the areas [around] are pasture. It’s like an island of consciousness that we’re trying to create in this region of the Amazon.”
Banner image: Amazon people in the BR-163 area, such as Mariana, face challenges from the economic model imposed by agribusiness, logging and gold mining. Image by Fernando Martinho.
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