- Communities in the Amazon reported severe cuts of up to 80% of Brazil nut crops, with some territories collecting “not even a single nut.”
- The nut tree, which can live up to 800 years, is crucial for forest economies and ecosystems, but is increasingly vulnerable to extreme climate events, such as the historic droughts of 2023 and 2024.
- Sold worldwide, the Brazil nut’s price soared fourfold, prompting experts to warn of market instability if buyers abandon it, urging recognition of their ecological value and continued inclusion in product lines.
KARIPUNA INDIGENOUS TERRITORY, Brazil — Each year, the rainforest communities of Brazil eagerly await the arrival of harvest season for Brazil nuts, which typically begins in November and goes on until March. Also known as Pará nuts or Amazonian chestnuts, the seed is the primary source of income for many extractivist, Indigenous and riverine communities, who spend the remainder of the year living on small farms.
“The money from the nuts is used to support the family, build houses, and buy food, shoes and clothes,” Elziane Ribeiro de Souza, from the Cajari Extractive Reserve in Amapá state, told Mongabay by phone. “When possible, it is used to buy a motorcycle, a car or a small boat. We survive on it. The nut is a sustainable product of the community.”
Souza lives in Água Branca do Cajari, one of the 13 communities inside the extractive reserve, known in Brazil as a Resex, that’s dedicated to collecting Brazil nuts. This year, however, they collected 70% less than expected. That’s according to data from Embrapa, Brazil’s federal agricultural research company that runs the NewCast project, which assists four Amazonian communities working on nut harvesting.
The shortage has already led to a sharp price surge. In March 2025, a 20-liter (5.3-gallon) haul of nuts cost 220 reais ($39.70), almost four times higher than usual.
“The harvest here was very poor, and we think it’s because of the weather,” Souza said . Losses have also occurred in other parts of the rainforest, with some communities reporting a sharp 80% decline in crops, according to Embrapa.
In the Wai Wai Indigenous Territory, in Roraima state, the Anauá community collected 200 bags of nuts this harvest season, a tiny fraction of the 3,500 they gathered the previous year. “This year’s harvest was very poor,” Anauá leader Levi José da Silva told Mongabay by phone.
Elsewhere, there was nothing to collect, as in the Karipuna Indigenous Territory, in Rondônia state. “We didn’t harvest a single nut,” leader Adriano Karipuna told Mongabay during a visit to the territory. “That had never happened, and we realize that the environmental impacts even affected the economy. This was one of the Karipuna’s sources of income.”
This is the second time the Brazil nut harvest has been hit this hard. The first time was in 2017, when crops crashed by 50%. Researchers attributed the phenomenon back then to El Niño, the abnormal warming of the surface waters of the equatorial Pacific Ocean. Brazil was again hit by El Niño in 2023 and 2024, leading to a severe drought in the Amazon and one of the rainforest’s worst fire seasons.
“The flowering period of the [Brazil] nut tree is very long, as is the fruiting period,” Patrícia da Costa, leader of the NewCast project, told Mongabay by video call. “Together, they take more than a year. The fruit is very large and heavy, and it develops slowly. So the drought events of a year ago will impact the harvest now.”
An Amazonian celebrity
The Brazil nut tree (Bertholletia excelsa) is one of the best-known plant species from the Amazon, and also one of its longest-lived and tallest. Specimens have been recorded living up to 800 years, and some have been measured growing to a height of up to 60 meters (nearly 200 feet).
On the global market, Brazil nuts are coveted alongside other “superfoods” like açaí, known for their benefits to human health. The Brazil nut’s main feature is its high concentration of selenium, a mineral that improves immune function, thyroid regulation and antioxidant defense.
Brazil’s government has long tried to boost the country’s share of the global supply of Brazil nuts. Despite the name, only half of global sales of raw Brazil nuts come from the country. When it comes to processed, unpeeled nuts, the country’s share of the international market falls to 10%, since most of the Brazilian product is processed abroad.
The tree is a protected species in Brazil, but it’s not uncommon to witness dead Brazil nut trees rotting in the middle of recently deforested areas. According to the Emílio Goeldi Museum of Pará, a pioneering Amazon scientific research center, the Brazilian government’s support for cattle ranching from the 1960s led to the destruction of many Brazil nut trees, especially in the so-called Brazil nut polygon in Marabá municipality, in Pará state. “Although very resistant, the tree cannot withstand fire management for three consecutive years, a technique used to clear pastures,” the museum stated on its website. “The polygon gave rise to the [Brazil] nut tree cemetery.”
With extreme climate events now posing a new threat to the species, researchers and local communities are racing to minimize the impacts on nut production. “It is urgent to promote the renewal of [Brazil] nut groves,” said Marcelino Guedes, an Embrapa researcher who works with the Resex Cajari’s communities. “Because, just like us, younger nut trees are more resistant; they feel less [the effects of climate change],” he said, adding that the trees take around eight years to start producing nuts.
One alternative is to grow new trees in abandoned farm areas, which are naturally suited for their growth and reproduction, in part thanks to a rather large rodent known as the agouti. “In these areas, there are more young nut trees than in the forest,” Costa said . “This occurs because nut trees need sunlight to grow, and because agoutis, which disperse the nuts, like these environments and carry the seeds to abandoned farmland.”
Trimming away the vines that wrap around the trees may also improve nut production by up to 30%, according to Embrapa. The organization is also teaching communities to grow Brazil nut tree seedlings in greenhouses, and is working on a genetic improvement program to select varieties that are more resistant to climate change.
Price changes may affect communities
The Brazilian nut supply chain depends exclusively on the rainforest communities, which devote up to two months to gathering the nuts from deep within the forest. According to the Amazon Chestnut Observatory (OCA), a civil society network supporting rainforest nut producers, the nut trade employs more than 60,000 people from traditional communities, at least 127 community associations, and 60 processing and trading companies.
Most Amazonian communities sell their nuts to intermediaries, who in turn supply the agroindustries that steam, peel and dry the seeds before selling them to distributors and supermarkets. Other times, the nuts are directly exported before being processed.
Indigenous and extractivist Amazonian communities earn the smallest share of the revenue from this supply chain — just 4%, according to 2020 data from the OCA. Meanwhile, the processing companies take 12%, and the wholesale and retail companies make 84%. During the 2020 harvest, the OCA found that collectors received an average of 5.05 reais (about 90 U.S. cents) per kilogram of nuts. The price of the final product in the supermarkets, however, was 169.90 reais ($30.60) — 30 times higher.
Some Amazonian communities, such as the Wai Wai people in Roraima, have been trying to cut out the intermediaries and sell the nuts directly to national food companies. “When we didn’t know the companies, we stuck with the middlemen,” said Wai Wi leader Levi José da Silva . “Now that we have an association, we sell to companies like Mutran and Wickbold. That way, the price improves a little.”
Others want to create their own agroindustries to sell the product at a higher price. “We are still fighting to get an agroindustry to process raw nuts and nut products,” said Souza from the Resex Cajari. Currently, the community sells part of the product to intermediaries and the rest to the National Supply Company , which distributes it to public schools and charitable organizations.
The Amazon’s long distances and poor roads are some of the main challenges to setting up processing facilities in these territories, Embrapa’s Guedes said. “Most communities in the Amazon still live in extreme precariousness, lacking basic infrastructure,” he said. “There is a lack of regular electricity and basic sanitation.”
The heavy losses in 2025 have raised concerns about the destabilization of the nut price, potentially triggering a repeat of what happened during the last crop failure in 2017. That year, the sharp drop in supply saw prices triple.
The market’s response was to stop buying it. Brazil nuts are sold as part of a “nut basket” that also includes almonds, hazelnuts, cashews and pistachios . If any of these products becomes too scarce or expensive, it’s removed or replaced with another one.
However, crop failures are commonly followed by an abundant harvest; the trees tend to compensate for periods of low production with greater fruiting in subsequent years. In 2018, the communities had plenty of Brazil nuts to offer, but few buyers, and prices dropped by almost 60% below the average price.
“Agroextractivists who had suffered the previous year because they had very little product, had an excellent harvest the following year, but had no one to sell it to, or had to sell it very cheaply,” said Costa from Embrapa’s NewCast project. “We estimated that it took at least three years for the price to return to its pre-climate event level.”
To avoid another rebound effect this time around, Embrapa has published a technical note to companies, notifying them that the crop loss is temporary and urging them to keep the nuts in their production lines. Researchers and forest representatives also say the industry should differentiate Brazil nuts from the other products in the basket.
“The [Brazil] nut is the only nut that protects thousands of hectares of Amazon Rainforest, which is associated with its biodiversity and helps to preserve languages,” Costa said . “We are trying to show this to the market to add value to the product.”
Banner image: Some Amazonian communities have reported harvests declining by up to 80% due to El Niño. Image courtesy of Agência Brasil.
Fernanda Wenzel is an investigative reporter based in Porto Alegre, Brazil. A former Pulitzer Center fellow, she has investigated issues like land grabbing in the Amazon, beef and the gold supply chains and violations of Indigenous and Quilombolas rights. Wenzel’s stories have been published by Brazilian and international outlets like CNN, BBC, The Guardian, Folha de S.Paulo and Intercept Brasil.
Karla Mendes is a staff investigative and feature reporter for Mongabay in Brazil and a member of the Pulitzer Center’s Rainforest Investigations Network. She is the first Brazilian and Latin American ever elected to the board of the Society of Environmental Journalists (SEJ); she was also nominated Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) chair. Read her stories published on Mongabay here. Find her on 𝕏, Instagram, LinkedIn, Threads and Bluesky.
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