Value chains and soft commodities in Amazonia. Regulatory prospects for commodified biodiversity according to the glocal production chain of açaí

ABSTRACT

This triple case study attempts, from the viewpoint of economic and environmental anthropology, to take into account and to assess pertinent cultural, political, institutional, and economic factors that have an impact on how the açaí value chain develops or restrains according to the given regulatory frameworks. Based on the common-pool resources approach (CPR), the study examines how institutional actors negotiate in a local/global (glocal) dynamic and how from these different scales, they contest and intertwine while pursuing use, access, and management strategies for the açaí production. The article aims to contribute with anthropological insights to the LULC research by underlining the agency of the subjects of land use and tenure policies in Amazonia; to enhance the prominence of local actors and to promote the cultural and economic value of their traditional practices and institutions.

KEYWORDS:

• Amazonia
• NTFPs
• biodiversity
• Caboclos
• açaí value chain
• local commons
• economic anthropology

Introduction

Açaí is a tropical fruit that grows on an Amazonian endemic palm¹. It has traditionally been consumed as a staple food by the local peoples for many centuries². In the Brazilian state of Pará, and especially in its capital city Belém, the blueberry-like fruit is considered to be a distinguishing food feature and an identity hallmark (Shanley & Medina, 2005) while in other large Amazonian cities, like Manaus, its presence does not enjoy such cultural prominence.

By the end of the 1990s, açaí entered the market of the so-called superfoods. Praised for its high nutritional value and antioxidant power -due to ist extraordinarily high concentration of a compound called anthocyanin- açaí entered into the niche markets of nutritional supplements and luxury cosmetics.

In his groundbreaking ethnographic study about the açaí value-chain at the early stage of its globalisation process: ‘The Amazonian Caboclo and the açaí palm: Forest farmers in the global market’ (2008), Eduardo Brondízio offered a critical visualisation of the açaí production. Explaining the cultural, economic, and social impact of the traditional production (which was, back then, gaining increasing popularity in the global market), Brondízio´s work provides the most comprehensive anthropological study on this topic.

The here presented case studies of the açaí value chain, much inspired by Brondízio, is based upon three micro-ethnographies³, conducted in the Colombian (three weeks fieldwork, in March 2016) and in the Brazilian Amazon (one trimester in the field, from June to August 2016). Each case study will present a particular path followed by açaí across the chain: each chain will be presented as a dynamic process where actors and their interrelations have been qualitatively evaluated in terms of their institutional capacity to negotiate and to deal with conflicts at each point of the chain.

The study aims to contribute to the current issue by offering a case study grounded on ethnographic evidence about the institutional dynamic supporting the regulatory framework that determines the chains´ path of açaí, as a Non-Timber-Forest Product (NTFP). Institutions to be considered are governmental and non-governmental development agencies, municipalities, research institutes, labour unions, cooperatives, local communities. In this regard, the case studies deliver a glimpse of possibilities for applied researchers seeking to encompass a large group of institutions and actors involved; an example on how to allocate the boundaries between institutional competences in a diffuse institutional landscape that could be methodologically helpful in designing more efficient policies on land-use planning.

The three cases aim to describe the relationship between the existing regulations; each case presents a chains´ length that is determined by a different set of rules, regarding the sustainable management of land and the people´s right to have access to their livelihood in the rainforests⁴. The cases triad tackles thus the entanglements of the regulatory frameworks of land, people, and environmental rights, given de jure, that have an impact on the production chain.

Regarding açaí as a soft commodity, it is important to notice that the product acquire particular and specific cumulative values, both monetary and symbolic, along the value chain (Kopytoff, 1986). The cognitive associations with the cultural/biological (natural) landscape recalled by the idea of Amazonia are key to understanding the value adding process. That imagery represents a significant factor for the process of its commodification. Although the analysis of the commodification process itself exceeds the concerns of this article, in order to follow its overall argument, it´s important to keep in mind that açaí, wherever the productive chain may end, retains for the consumer a strong connection to its origin. For the ‘outsider’ consumer, the original context where the fruit is produced, has been narratively shaped by the historical construction of Amazonia, not only in the geopolitical but also in the mythical sense. The successful market branding as an energy booster (youth/potency) is unterstood to be linked to the colonial narrative about the region, that keeps shaping the post-capitalist consumption patterns and the relationship between Amazonia and the world⁵.

Based on the common-pool resources (CPR) approach (Ostrom, 1990, 1999), the case studies are aimed at identifying the network of actors -with their particular interests and agencies- involved in the açaí production chain within a broad transnational space. As the main fieldwork was conducted in Amazonia, the analysis focuses hence on the contested role played by the manifold -often underestimated- local actors, inquiring about their potential application/disregard/ negotiation (i.e. modelling agency, see below on page four) of the operating frameworks regulating the use, the access, and the management of land where the açaí palms grow. It will be explained case by case, how the recognition of their abilities can offer input to the land-modelling discussion. The argument conveyed in this paper converges from a variety of issues that emerged from the initial research question about the impact of the regulatory framework on the açaí production chain. It can be resumed in three key points:

• Açaí-berry is considered a traditional non-timber forest product (NTFP). As such, land-planning and agent-based modelling have been applied in order to sustainably increase the production and/or to booster community empowerment strategies (a black and white contrast of those strategies will be provided by the first v/s the third case)

• The açaí production, like other NTFPs turned into soft commodities, raises concerns related to biocultural diversity conservation, sustainable resource management, food security, etc. Overproduction has lead to environmental consequences and damages to the biocultural dynamics of the local producers, like in the cases of cocoa, coffee, quinoa, palm oil production (Büscher, Sullivan, Neves, Igoe, & Brockington, 2012; Vivero Pol, 2015)

• Açaí is economically and environmentally embedded in Amazonia and therefore subjected to that particular situation of land tenure, use and management (Descola & Pálsson, 1996)

Amazonia is considered to be an utmost landmark of geopolitics into a bioculturally heterogeneus regional unity. Amazonia also represents a paradigm for land struggles based on economic, political, and cultural conflicts among a myriad of stakeholders to be found in the global arena (Diegues, 1998). In that conflicted context, the açaí value chain study provides an angle from which to identify, approach, and tackle the ongoing transformations at the extractive frontiers of the Amazonian rainforests. The açaí production features, in an exemplary manner, the outcomes and challenges of a critical institutional, cultural, and sociopolitical glocal environment.

To draw a fully comprehensive picture of the institutional structure supporting the chain would be certainly an unrealistic task; nevertheless, the presentation of the cases and the analysis of each particular set of rules for the access, use and management of land will offer an encompassing picture of the weaknesses and strengths of the existing regulatory frameworks supporting the chain that will help to give an answer to the agency problem: how do the actors exercise their actual competences while negotiating interests at institutional level? Are there possibilities to increase the value chain benefits for the local producers?

Debates and outcomes

Following Müller and Munroe (2014), the land-use and land-cover (LULC) research tackles the issues of agency, power-relationships, exchange, and institutions, seeking to incorporate them as factors into spatially-explicit modelling.

In that sense, the here presented case studies offer an overall contribution to the current issue on Transdisciplinary perspectives on current transformations at extractive and agrarian frontiers in Latin America. First, as an approach to deal with the complexity of glocal interdependent relationships, yet on a scale – given by the chains scope- that allows one to grasp the institutional entanglements (Verburg et al., 2015; Vieira, Toledo, & Araújo, 2016). Second, to envision positive outcomes by encompassing agencies and finding win-win solutions to strengthen the agents of the chain (Vermeulen, 2004). Third, providing ethnographic empirical data of sustainable rainforest-resource management, showing the potential contribution of açaí, as a biocultural heritage of Amazonia (Seddon et al., 2016). Last but not least, providing insights into the global food security discussion (Prakash et al., 2016). Although there has been a consistent interest in the role that açaí could play in the future in the realm of food security (Brondízio, 2008; Callo-Concha, 2009; Dias Trevisan, Celso Fantini, Schmitt-Filo, & Farley, 2015; Oestreicher et al., 2014), there is still a gap to be filled by experimental research into its potential in this respect.

The article deals with a set of more specific debates related to the Land Use Science hosting issue, namely:

• The analysis of the chain as a glocal process embraces the issue of the spatial boundaries at large. Starting as a product with a strong local attachment, açaí turns into a globalized consumption item moving through the chain according to the regulations applied on each link. Regulations will resonate across the chain and will eventually determine its length, as proved with ethnographic evidence in each case study. Moreover, production rules set from afar may have a decisive impact on the local production and even trigger long-term changes for the local land users (Le Velly & Dufeu, 2016; Prifti, 2015)

• The study deals with the problem of resource access and management in three ways: first, by examining the extraction of a rainforest asset turned into a soft commodity from a bottom-up perspective, in line with the debate of agent-based modelling, as mentioned above. Second, by identifying actors and their competences along the productive chain path. Third, providing cases focused on local empowerment, on production-oriented, and on case-based modelling (a particularly interesting task in the second case, due to its complete absence of land tenure regulation) to enrich the debate on asymmetries and alternative modes of land use (Meyfroidt, 2013; Michetti & Zampieri, 2014; Moran et al., 2000; PNUMA & OTCA, 2008; Robinson et al., 2007)

• Discussing both strategies to envision new negotiation possibilities given by existing legal loopholes in regulatory frameworks of land tenure, use, and management (Rechtschaffen, Gauna, & O´Neill, 2009; Schönenberg, 2011) as well as new possible production scenarios according to the capabilities to negotiate new boundaries/regulation frameworks for the extraction, production, and circulation of açaí at a glocal level (Lapeyre, Froger, & Hrabanski, 2014; MacDonald, 2010; Peluso, 2016)

Theoretical foundations

When I started the study of the açaí value chain, the notion of how a traditional Amazonian fruit could turn into a soft commodity, a luxury consumption item at the end of a highly diversified global chain seemed to be, at first, just a mechanic and obvious process driven solely by the dark forces of the market. Soon I found out that the impact of the actors/ agencies at each node of the chain, from local to global, occur in a rather complex dynamic beyond the economic domain (Viveiros de Castro, 2012).

To grasp that complexity, I started borrowing a few conceptual tools from economic anthropology, which is the branch of the discipline mostly concerned about the exchange patterns of both material and symbolic goods. Its ethnographic gaze traditionally focuses on the specificities of locally attached productive practices. According to Davis (1996, p. 215), exchange patterns can be explained according to three principles:

… rationality as a single principle, underlying everything; reciprocity and racionality as dual principles, the one gradually and inevitably giving way to the other; and third, a three-principle analysis in which rationality, reciprocity and pooling are mutually exclusive alternatives.

In the case of land use, tenure and management regulations, the distinction between de facto and de jure regulatory frameworks indicates that both outside and under the rule of law (and also in the grey zone brought by deregulation), communities will develop strategies to cope and to adapt themselves to prescriptions that may be unaccountable or plainly, non-existent⁶.

Conceptually, the ideas of embeddedness and commodification, as introduced by Polanyi (2001), have been particularly fruitful for the analysis of interrelations in the economic and social spheres, emphasizing the institutional layers between different scales and spaces (Cox, 1998; Maucourant & Plociniczak, 2013; Smith, 2007, 2008).

Second, environmental anthropology (Kopnina & Shoreman-Ouimet, 2017; Padoch et al., 1999) provided another set of analytical devices for my research, mostly as case studies. Established as a field of applied research on sustainable development, and frequently targeted at fostering agroforestry systems in rural areas, environmental anthropology offers a perspective that underlines the specific cultural dynamics of each community, understanding the community in terms of shared practices and common values thus, not necessarily attached to the physical boundaries set by territorial jurisdictions at municipal, state, or national level (Fraser, 2012; Sassen, 2013). In the field of applied research, environmental anthropology has contributed to resolving the dilemma of how to combine traditional practices with technical cooperative efforts – led by development agencies- to improve agroforestry systems (Castro et al., 2015; Correa & Roopnaraine, 2014; Maezumi et al., 2018; Murillo, 2001; Nazarea, 2006; Padoch et al., 1999; Peluso, 2017).

Third, the common-pool resources approach (CPR), which complements the two perspectives mentioned above. Originally designed to be used in more interdisciplinary environments (Anderies & Janssen, 2013; McKean, 1998), CPR tackles the problem of land tenure, use and management by redefining the idea of community and the understanding of human-environment dynamics (Bollier & Helfrich, 2012; Hughes, Carpenter, Rockström, Scheffer, & Walker, 2013), according to regulatory principles established at national and at international levels (for instance, International Labour Organisations´ Indigenous and Tribal People -ILO 169- and the Biodiversity Conventions). To illustrate this idea, I will quote the Article 225, Chapter VI on Environment of the Brazilian Constitution:

(0) All persons are entitled to an ecologically balanced environment, which is an asset for the people´s common use and is essential to healthy life, it being the duty of the Government and of the community to defend it and preserve it for present and future generations.⁷

Common is a concept to be understood as a verb meaning practices of doing together (Euler, 2015, p. 12). Expected to happen inside a community -which is usually neither egalitarian nor democratic- it can be best described as a situation that is adjustable to environmental changes and agency boundaries; a type of social organisation where people come together around shared interests, values, rules, etc. and is indivisible from its surrounding environment (Johnston, 2003, p. 25; Fennell, 2011, p. 11). The prescriptive character of institutions is given by rules to be followed de facto or de jure. In this context, institutions can be described as:

… a set of formal and informal rules that shape interactions among humans and with nature (…) promote stability of expectations ex ante, and consistency in actions, ex post (…) contrast with uncertain political interactions among unequally placed actors, and unpredictable processes where performances of social actors do not follow any necessary script. Strategic actors may attempt to bypass the constraints of existing institutions, and create new institutions that match their interests. (Agrawal & Gibson, 1999, p. 637).

Tested at the beginning in the field of comparative studies on community based sustainable resources management (Koontz, 2003, p. 5), the common-pool resources approach developed the so-called strategy for Institutional Development Analysis (IAD) (McGinnies & Ostrom, 1992) to cope with embedded regulatory frameworks. IAD is based on eight design principles to be taken into account in the analysis (Cox, Arnold, & Villamayor, 2010); elements that will be identified below in the presentation of each productive chain case:

1. clearly defined boundaries of action

2. congruence of appropriation/provision rules and local conditions

3. collective choice arrangements

4. accountable monitoring

5. gradual sanctioning (when boundaries set by rules and/or space are trespassed)

6. conflict resolution mechanisms

7. communitary rights to organize should not be challenged by authorities, and

8. governance activities layered as nested enterprises

In sum, the theoretical frame encompasses three complementary perspectives grounded on economic anthropology, aimed to help grasp the institutional entanglements surrounding the chain.

Methodology

The study was conducted in the frame of two major research projects that provided the support to conduct the fieldwork. The first one, named Transregional Amazonia, hosted by the Latin America Institute at the Free University Berlin (LAI FU) in cooperation with the National University of Colombia (UNAL) in Leticia, was with the aim to develop a network of applied research on sustainability and conservation between the two main academic partners, as a participative network of international scholars and local policy-makers.

The second part of the research was conducted alongside another binational joint project between the Institute of Law of the Federal University of Pará and the Institute for Latin America Studies of the Free University of Berlin: New Partnerships – Agrarian Law on the Ground Project, headed by Regine Schönenberg. The aim of this project was to tackle the Land Issue in Amazonia from a transdisciplinary perspective, according to the historic, legal, political perspectives, in order to deliver a critic analysis of the Terra Legal regularization programme⁸, updated to include the ongoing political crisis at that time (which most controversial feature was the impeachment of President Dilma Rousseff in December 2015, before her ultimate suspension in August 2016).

The fieldwork was methodologically built upon participant observation, in-depth interviews, and thick description within the broad spectrum of actors involved in the acaí production network. Among them, the most salient were: the vendors at the weekly indigenous market in Leticia (Amazonia State, Colombia), the floodland producers (riberihnos) of açaí in Boa União, the port workers (atravessadores and carregadores) at the two main açaí ports in the city of Belém (Pará State, Brazil), the owners of an açaí fabric in the same city, administrative workers of the Agricultural Cooperative in the municipality of Tomé-Açu. Added to this, I had the opportunity to interview a few small and large producers I met while visiting the most recognisable local agrarian expos, congresses and markets in the Paraense region. The data collected was sorted, for analytical purposes, into three source groups, depending on their platform of political agency: institutional, academic, and civil society⁹.

Inspired by the critic ethnography approach (Falzon, 2009; Foladori & Taks, 2004; Borges, 2013; Lins Ribeiro, 2014), I decided to approach my informants telling them that in the EU, people can find açaí in cosmetic products, such as expensive capsules containing a few grams of the dried luxurious fruit, in almost every supermarket. The reaction of the people was incredulity first, and then amazement. I was equally surprised to discover that not a single local small producer was aware of the global scope of the açaí market¹⁰. I will discuss this point further in the presentation of the first and the second case.

The ethnographic work had a multi-focal orientation, suitable to the research object, i.e. the regulatory framework. Therefore, besides conducting the micro-ethnographies in Amazonia, I also spoke to consumers, producers, distributors and policy-makers involved in certification processes for food in Europe (European Food Safety Authority, EFSA). In this sense, the research was conducted across spatial boundaries and moved around the glocal space, in both physical and symbolic ways: when telling the local producers about the açaí abroad, and vice-versa, asking consumers, producers and policy-makers what makes açaí interesting:

Rather than being swapped, locations are therefore actively made and contested, and this makes their history at least as important as their geography. (Falzon, 2009, p. 16).

Following this premise, the research in the field demanded an understanding of the chain as a long-term historical process. I have to stress that the research object was not the value chain but, instead, the exchange dynamics of knowledge, identity and symbolic expectations that could not be simplified or dismissed as if were mere consumption niches.

Case studies

Leticia, Colombia: production chain with local scope for the indigenous population

This first case exemplifies a production chain with local scope, following a short lineal trail between the city of Leticia and its nearest surroundings. Leticia belongs nowadays to Colombia, at the border with Peru and Brazil, where the three counties are today joined together at the so-called triple frontier (Murillo, 2001; Picón, 2010; Vico, Franky, & Echeverri, 2000).

Leticia´s regional, economic and social history has been largely impacted by the influx of different ethnic groups, not only from Amazonia but from virtually the whole globe, in two historical periods characterized by their violent background: during the rubber boom, that required labour and slavery force (Ullán de la Rosa, 2004), and during the first half oft he twentieth century, when Leticia became a regional hotspot of drug trafficking. The city holds still nowadays its port character, being a commercial hub with a long history of geopolitical issues with its neighbours (Vergel-Tovar, 2008).

In the field, I have confirmed and checked that traditional producers of açaí in the Colombian Amazon are not aware of the global scale of the product market and that there is a knowledge gap to be filled regarding the chains´ scope, a disanvantadge given primarily by the lack of certifications playing a relevant role in the local production. Although a few initiatives to provide recognition to the producers´ efforts (to accredit sanitary conditions, sustainability or fair trade production) have been carried out, there have not been yet certifications successfully implemented.

The production itself is strongly attached to the living conditions of the indigenous population (Triana-Moreno, Rodríguez, & García, 2006). The collection of the fruit takes place inside the indigenous reservation of the Tikuna-Uitoto peoples, placed a few kilometres away from Leticia city centre. There, the Tikuna-Uitoto were granted with land in recognition to their traditional culture and also, as a compensation measure due to the colonial impact driven by the nation-state, historically accountable for the violent settlement history of the port city.

The açaí produced here is mostly for the own community consumption, and the market scope extends a few kilometres away from the producers´ community to the so-called Indigenous Market, Saturdays in the Orellana town square. In that urban space¹¹, local inhabitants and market visitors are generally sceptical about the sanitary conditions in which the açaí concoction is produced: mixed with water and packaged in small half-litre bags or one-litre plastic bottles to be transported a few kilometres under tropical climate conditions. Therefore, in absence of regulations, the most important hallmark of this chain case is that it reaches only the local urban/rural space and that it is mostly done by and for the indigenous population.

The fact that the açaí chain runs only over such a limited space provides interesting clues about the impact of the urbanization process, happening quicker than the implementation of adequate urban planning and sustainable resource management strategies, hence broadening the gap between the city and the indigenous reservations. Tourism plays a role -metaphorically- extracting traces of the Amazon rainforests culture to the safer urban borders to meet the expectations of the visitors, but the indigenous market alone does not have any significant impact on the NTFPs producers.

Inside the Tikuna-Uitoto communities, the limited access to traditional means of livelihood, such as the acaí palm, replicates the precariousness of the city itself: the absence of sanitized water and the transport situation are the most critical features. Paradoxically, in a major rain forest city, water from natural sources other than rain is considered to be unsafe for human consumption, which makes water a scarce resource¹².

It is therefore not surprising that local people normally do not buy açaí at the indigenous market, and that the main daily market does not sell açaí either because of the widespread perception of unsafety regarding its preparation, despite its demand. The touristic city spirit has found instead another way to hold the presence of the renowned typical amazonian food for its visitors: bio jewellery (‘biojoyas’), handcrafted, apparently, with acaí seeds.

Açaí can also be found in traditional medicine stores, where the processed product, brought from the Peruvian side, is sold as powder (like in Europe) packed in small plastic bags (that are less attractive than the regular European packaging) showing seal stamps by a Peruvian governmental agency and by the Colombian transport agency. Those were the only certifications that I could find in the field. For the local small-scale production, there are no certifications of minimum sanitary or quality standards. The few initiatives of sustainable development based on the açaí production in this area (Castro-Coma & Martí-Costa, 2016) have been unable to succeed due to lack of monitoring.

Last but not least, the fieldwork conducted at the triple frontier, helped me to identify informal transnational commerce of dried açaí. Operating out of the legal frame, in a fully deregulated grey zone, it is especially hard to quantify the extent of resource extraction and to identify the trade mechanisms where the exchange boundaries seem to be set only by the imagination. Children, endangered fauna, and drugs are regular traffic items in this area.

Ponta de Pedras, Brazil: açaí production chain as a cultural hallmark with regional scope

The production of açaí is key to understanding the cultural identity of the State of Pará. It offers a paradigmatic example of non-timber sustainable production¹³ that suffers a diminishing of its potential due to an insufficient production regulatory framework, as observed in almost all its chain nodes. One of the structural causes of this loss has been the incapacity of the authorities to implement the existing Land Tenure and Land Use regulatory frameworks.

The fieldwork conducted with the Boa União community at the Laranjeira riverside (Municipality of Ponta de Pedras at the Marajó Archipelago, Pará Region, Brazil), helped me to grasp the extent of the application problem of land tenure and land use regulations (as a part of the major Land Issue in Amazonia, populary known by the locals as ‘A Questão da Terra’), case-based on this traditional Caboclo people community, whose economy is solely based on açaí production.

The resource management of the palm is dictated by its harvest periods (twice per year) and connected with hunting, fishery and fluvial cycles. The management of the palms happens in the açaizal, where the traditional agroforestry work of the Caboclo people takes place. The açaizal is a place between their self-made houses on the riverside and the forest. Each family of the community, compound by fourteen units, has its açaizal. Each of them is an agroforestry system on its own, dependent on the collective effort invested by each family unit. The fact that some neighbours are relatives, increases the cooperation and the production outcomes, shaping the community life in a variety of ways. All community-members hold different responsibilities in the maintenance of productive activities.

The first node of the production chain is located at the açaizal, which is the space for collective work maintaining the palms and picking its fruit. According to them, the boundaries of the açaizal are extended to its management requirements and therefore, it is considered to be indivisible from the other spaces -river, house, forest- that compose their living space as layers. The community members´ roles are understood in a similar way (e.g. no strict division of labour).

When I first arrived in Boa União, both land tenure and land use situations have not been subjected to any regulation procedure yet, and even the origin of their land occupation was not clear. Community members traced their common history up to 30 years ago, while the municipal authorities spoke about a settlement existing for over 70 years inside a loose area.

The fieldwork inside the community was possible thanks to an opportunity to join a team of agricultural engineers that, at the request from a peasants organization of Ponta de Pedras (the municipality the community belongs to), came to support the process of regularisation of tenure situation. As part of the project activities, it was first necessary to start by defining where the community wanted to be placed in the map, so we had to discuss their ideas of land boundaries, distinguishing between what was considered useful, necessary and indispensable to their lives, depending on their perception regarding the above-mentioned space layers. While walking around the community lands with suitable GPS equipment, they told us where to set the geographic limits of each household unit. Some weeks after, we came back and gave to each family the documents indicating the officially recognized limits of their land, with the corresponding names and georeferenced coordinates. But these official documents do not grant land tenure rights and represent only the first legal requirement. As each case is specific and the process includes many steps to follow (in a diffuse institutional landscape), regulation occurs gradually and slowly and it may even take a decade to fulfil all its requirements.

It has already been mentioned that the chain follows a trace according to the existent corpus of regulation. The regulation frameworks´ architecture are expected to be designed as an institutional body legally established (de jure) and thus, accessible for virtually everyone capable to reach and read the information provided by the responsible governmental agencies. However, de facto, many members of peasants´ organisations are functionally illiterate and have little contact with local authorities. Because of the costs (in terms of time and money) of crossing long distances to the Amazonian communities, and the limited Internet access in remote rural areas, it is difficult, if not impossible, to contact the authorities through the many virtual channels and platforms that have been developed to overcome the distance (/knowledge) gap.

The second node happens as a situation at the riverside, where the commoners meet the first buyers. The middlemen, locally knowm as ‘atravessadores’, appear in small motorized boats in front of the houses and handle the purchase of açaí according to the price of the ‘rasa’. The ‘rasa’ is a home-made bucket made from palm leaves, that contains on average fourteen kilograms of the fresh fruit and it represents the measure to proceed with the transaction of the fruit at this level. From here, the product will continue the fluvial route to the next port, in the city of Belém. The price for the ‘rasa’ is designated by the atravessadores and by the ‘safra’ (harvesting) period that determines the amount of fruit available. The fact that Caboclos´ homes are equipped with small generators providing insufficient electricity source limits the fruits´ storage to a few hours, adding more disadvantage to the producers. The fruits have to be therefore picked shortly before the arrival of its first buyers.

At the second node, the exchange rules are established according to the context of access, use and management of the production as community practice. In the case of the Boa União community the açaí producers, as commoners, de facto self-regulate their rainforest extractive activities, reproducing practices that take place outside the margins of legally stipulated regulations. Still, the producers – commoners- cope with the situation with moderate success: the management of the Euterpe oleracea palm, as local common resource, represents the principal source to sustain the reproduction subsistence economy in Boa União, as well as for the myriad of other communities economically based on the açaí production in the Marajó archipelago.

Absence of external institutional recognition creates both, de facto and de jure, a marginalization of the outside world. This situation is well known by the ‘atravessador’, who exercises his control over the producer by determining the price he (mostly young men) is willing to pay for each ‘rasa’. The second node can be thus understood as an exchange situation dominated by the middleman, based on customary rules that stemmed from legal abandonment. Because the community does not exist de jure for the authorities, producers and their families find themselves exposed to the realm of crime.

The third node happens in a more dynamic group situation in the port. One of the protagonists of the interaction is the ‘atravessador’, who delivers the buckets (‘paneiros’) that will be carried to the market from the quay by the ‘carregador’. The ‘carregador’ will transport the ‘paneiro’, which, from here, will be sold to his trusted market seller (‘maquineiro’). The ‘maquineiro’ will deal with the buyers that come to the port and are themselves açaí sellers in their own small or medium scale shops or restaurants. This buyer/producer, known as ‘batedor’, is usually a shop owner – the region has plenty of such shops- and himself/herself operates the machine that extracts the stone of the fruit and mixes its pulp with water. The ready-to-eat açaí will be packaged by the ‘batedor’ or his/her helpers at the shop into transparent plastic bags, without any branding or certification. The recognition and identification among the actors playing at the port is the result of a long-term interaction based on bonds of trust, usually strengthed by friendship and familiar links. The prices will be handled accordingly. The ‘batedor’ will be able to check the quality of the product only once he starts to process it in the shop. Here, at the so-called ‘ponto do açaí’, the fourth node, the end buyers will pick up the bags daily for private consumption. The regional chain meets its final point here.

Açaí may continue onto another path when, instead of being transported to a ‘ponto do açaí’, it is carried to one of the processing plants for large production. In this private business context, technical and sanitary requirements have to meet high standards. The açaí processed and packaged here in the fifth node, branded with the company name and seals of quality approval, will be further transported to the major supermarket chains, at the national level.

Although the açaí industry must comply with higher production standards and be submitted to control and monitoring, it profits at the same time from public policies and private sector initiatives that consistently stimulate enterprises based on technological application, offer incentives to invest in sustainability projects and booster cooperation to improve labour conditions and diminish environmental impact. The institutional environment, favourable for private business, contrasts with the situation for many anonymous producers like the commoners of Boa União.

There is one last alternative path of the chain I could follow that stretched into another node: the Sustainable Agriculture Family Market, organized by students and academics that have cooperated through programmes of sustainable resource management and familiar strategies for rural economic empowerment. Sponsored by the Federal University of Pará (UFPA), the market organisers seek to attract people attached to the University, such as students or workers; to promote a healthy diet, based on organic vegetables and fruits, and also to improve the value of the regional food heritage. There are plenty of such initiatives both in urban as in semi-urban context. The exchange at the market happens as a situation created by a dynamic between the celebrated small scale producer and the customer that seeks to reaffirm his/her regional identity. Proud to present their unique variety of Amazonian products they will be happy not only to share their recipes but also and to talk about their work on the fields, where, in spite of the opportunity given by the market, there is still much to be improved in terms of land use. Interestingly, the producers speak openly and consciously about the market gap given by the absence of specific certification for their products (appellation of origin and organic production). Certification is at this stage perceived as a factor to aggregate value, which not only impacts as monetary matter but also, because of the longed-for symbolic recognition of their role in the constitution of regional identity: the paraense culture¹⁴.

Tomé-Açu, Brazil: agrogofestry systems, traditional culture, and global market of amazon products

In the third case, the chain extends into a global space. The first node is placed in the lands belonging to the Agricultural Cooperative of Tomé-Açu, known as CAMTA, headed by the members of a Japanese colony settled nearly one century ago in this municipality at the northeast of the Pará State.

The most remarkable feature of this case is that, in contrast to the others based on NTFPs system, the production here is based on the so-called SAFTA¹⁵, which are characterized by the implementation of irrigation systems and a local-specific land management, resulting in a highly diversified production taking place in the premises owned by CAMTA. One particular example of this specific agroforestry model is that the Euterpe oleracea palms are strategically peered together with other plants like the local cacao or the Asian mango; mixing endemic species with newly introduced ones to maximise the soil use and the quality of the harvested fruits.

The cooperative holds both the land tenure titles and the food processing plants where açaí is packaged as pulp, ice cream, powder, and oil. Grown and produced locally, the fruit will be from Tomé-Açu directly transported to the local, regional, national or international market. The production volume of açaí is intended to cover mostly the market demands of Japan and Central Europe. Acaí (in the many forms mentioned above) has received, de jure, from both regional and international agencies different certifications and seals of approval, thereby the production is, from the beginning, divided into two groups: one that suits the local requirements and other qualitatively upgraded to the more strict standards of the international superfood market.

Another important feature of CAMTA is its political development as a political elite in the municipality. CAMTA´s local identity is attached to its Japanese ethnic origins and the history of the families that arrived in the first half of the twentieth century. From then on, the cooperative has sociopolitically evolved following a hacienda alike model; its political agency is thereby based on the ownership of the production means (land and agricultural industry) and furthermore, reasserted by the broad positive recognition of its engagement in political and social activities.

Being the protagonist of the municipal decision-making, the cooperative have spread a network of interests in a transnational space; family, labour, and financial links connect CAMTA with many places in the world where they have established commercial partnerships with the label of Amazonia while, at municipal level, the perception of the cooperative reminds connected to its origins as an ethnic colony.

The prestige gained through their market success, makes CAMTA a recognizable brand, a synonym for high-quality products. It is also locally well-known that the cooperative can afford to acquire first-rate equipment for their processing plants and also to send the workers at the managerial level to be trained abroad. The symbolic but significant impact of such industrial and technical achievements (unusual in the region) provides hints to explain why, although the cooperative has almost no external agents that regularly monitor and control their production standards, their self-regulating situation does not tarnish the awarded popularity; in a context where the production chain of açaí has been, plausibly, certified with their consumers´ granted trust de facto.

Like in the fifth node of the Ponta de Pedras case study, both state and private sectors from Brazil, and also from other countries such as Japan and USA, have cooperated with CAMTA to improve their innovative SAFTA production in economic, social and environmental terms.

Comparative analysis and discussion

The cases presentation aimed at showing how the land use, tenure and management situation determines the extent of the açaí production chain, through the ethnographic description of three different studies, focused on the development and potential of each specific case.

The Colombian case deals with the urbanisation conflict and shows how national territorial limits are overcome by illegal trade while being surpassed by cultural dynamics of exchange and circulation, mainly because of its historical position as a trade hub between three national borders. The açaí production chain of the Tikuna-Uitoto community has been described around three nodes: first, the locus of the indigenous reservation where the traditional production takes place; second, the indigenous market in the square; and third, the exchange situation between vendors and consumers who are, mostly, relatives of community members or curious tourists. The community producers, as commoners, hold a tenure title as indigenous reservation, where the production of NTFPs allows the Tikuna-Uitoto peoples to exercise their power as cultural agents, in the limited manner given by the regulatory constraints (extend of land, transport and sanitary services provided by the city). The dynamic of each chain node provides an overview of the multiplicity of actors and their agencies: the market sellers and the promoters of the market tackle the cultural heritage conservation and the economic empowerment, while tourists demand true Amazon experiences. The market, as a situation, is possible due to the cooperative effort between agencies connected beyond institutional barriers and jurisdictional enclosures de jure. Municipal authorities, NGOs, academics, and peasants associations perform the opportunity to participate in civic life for indigenous people that have been historically oppressed, making them visible as producers of Amazon goods on a platform for cultural resistance in the urbanised context of Leticia. The described barriers to expand the chain point out where along the production chain (which node) could be improved to have a positive impact on the rural and urban community at large, beyond the (imaginary) borders between both spaces. The sanitary conditions and access to water are urgent issues, but they cannot be tackled without taking into account the settlement history of the city and the cultural identity of the community.

The case study of the Caboclos in Boa União demonstrates how the complete absence of institutional recognition of land, human¹⁶, and environmental rights have compelled the commoners to organise themselves and seek external institutional assistance to determine their land boundaries. Limits have been then set accordingly with the traditional management of the açaí palms. The production chain starting from the Boa União floodplain has been described from the roles that the actors on each of the five nodes represents: the commoner as manager of a deregulated land, the ‘atravessador’, the ‘carrregador’, ‘the batedor’, and the regional consumer of the symbolic Pará staple food. Because the ethnographic work was mostly conducted in the city of Belém, I could trace two other possible paths to be followed. First, a production chain with four nodes represented by the commoner, the factory, the supermarket chain and the superfood consumer located at the national level. The second productive chain extends in the frame of the organic food market. Following three steps, as in the Leticia case study, the chain is represented by the institutional actors: the commoner, the university market, and the consumer of organic food. Plus, the organic producers of Pará work hand in hand with the academics that support them organising the market and also offering agroforestry training.

Finally, the case study of CAMTA deals with a successful business that moves from following a hacienda model of land settlement to developing as a successful enterprise and as a sociopolitical actor, being able to adapt the themselves to the local requirements, while actively pursuing the institutionalization of their community needs. Enjoying widespread recognition, support of political authorities and the sympathy of the community, participating at the decision-making level, educating their think-tanks and actively pursuing policymaking; the last production chain expands its horizons to the global market at large, following this route: the owned mainland managed as SAFRA (where the fruit pickers are others than the landowners, in contrast to both other cases), the processing plants inside the town, and the world market of superfood.

International cooperation, aimed at communities economically based on açaí production, may contribute to meet the present climate goals promoting the value of traditional culinary practices and sustainable forests management. Certifications can increase the cultural value in a long-term process, as claimed by the actors in the cases that have fewer nodes and are less diversified. However, shorter production chain models do not appear to be necessarily more sustainable. Finally, the case studies indicate that the context where both superfood and organic food have become global trends requires a glocal understanding of the food sovereignty problem.

Contribution to the current issue: soft-commodities, extractivism, and land-use regulation boundaries

One of the goals of the examination of the paths followed by the açaí was to provide with an overview of the multiplicity of actors and agencies connected beyond institutional barriers and jurisdictional enclosures. Sassen (2013) identifies and conceptualises this situation as the deborder of territoriality by the territory, an issue that has been largely approached in the critical geography domain. Each case study deals with the issue of frontiers and spatial boundaries, showing that municipal, regional, national and international borders in Amazonia are de facto overcome by its ecological and social dynamics, that create legal loopholes due to jurisdictional uncertainties that make authorities to pass responsibilities to other agencies so that the problems given by the manifold precariousness remain unsolved. The scope of the here presented study, framed to its qualitative methodology, aimed to also to contribute with cases that show the strengths and weaknesses of the land tenure, use and management, regulatory frameworks, in order to foster local communities economically based on açaí production, pointing out where and in which direction further policies are needed.

The analysis of the glocal circulation of açaí as a soft commodity was expected to shed light onto the ongoing transformations at extractive frontiers that are moving towards sustainability, as presented in the two contrasting examples of Boa União (NTFPs production model) and Tomé-Açu (SAFTA production model) of agricultural practices based either on applied technologies or traditional knowledge.

The commodity-driven economy represents, by definition, a threat to both cultural and biological diversity, and it has historically been a considerably difficult economic gap for Latin American hinterland developing countries (Aragón & Cluesener-Godt, 2013; Chernela & Zanotti, 2014). The soft commodity market, on the other hand, may allow more sustainable management; the mild environmental impact can be a stimulus for international partners to cooperate with the local producers, as in the case of Tomé Açu.

Sustainability is indeed a controversial concept (Bina, 2013) usually applied to describe the benefits of agricultural practices based in small-scale-production, traditional agroforestry systems or traditional extractive economies of NTFPs (as in the case of açaí), but also in the context of the development agencies promoting green (washing) economy. Critics of the neoliberal biodiversity conservation, as Büscher et al. (2012), have distinguished between the capitalist inherent commodification of nature and the public policies oriented to broaden that commodification process, sustained on the arbitrary division between the human and the natural resources. That dichotomic distinction has been long surpassed with both ethnographic and archaeological evidence about the anthropogenic impact in the ecosystem formation in the Amazon basin and the symbiotic relation between human activities, responsible for the quality of soils and the dispersion of plant life. (Cleary, 2001; Torres & Cuartas, 2013).

From the economic anthropology stance, exchange and social reproduction are entangled by rules that shape the community, insisting in the normative plasticity required to meaningfully articulate around relatively stable (predictable) cultural practices around shared principles, beyond seeking the individual benefit, as far as members acknowledge their agency to redesign the norms in the community situation. Likewise, global agencies, playing a role in the use of natural resources, are responsible for the regulatory frameworks of natural resources and found themselves submitted as well to the required adjustments of the biocultural conservation agendas, in a geopolitical battlefield, with actors intertwined in a continuum where interests are often contradictory between the local and the global scales.

The açaí productive chain case studies provide ethnographic evidence about the potential of a soft-commodity that developed under unfavourable regulatory frameworks and yet, has creatively set a new institutional environment. However, lack of knowledge about the specificities of local economic practices on the ground hinders long-term cooperation and monitoring of sustainable value-chain projects. The economic anthropology perspective offers a methodological and analytical contribution to help to understand the exchange relations, the practices and the dynamics of negotiation among actors.

Caboclo and Tikuna-Uitoto peoples have been successfully managing the endemic palm in their açaizales since centuries, applying the knowledge acquired by generations. Due to the limited scale of the production, traditional agricultural practices do not over-extract resources, causes chemical pollution, or diminish other livelihood means such as fish, fruits, and mammals that are constituents of their environment. In contrast, unsustainable management, like large-scale monoculture, produces a negative impact reducing the carrying capacity of the soils and spreading negative ecological and social consequences in the long-term.

Unfortunately, the small-scale producers I could contact during my fieldwork were not aware of the açaí chains´ extent, nor knew about the manifold commodification undergone by açaí across the global chain. This knowledge-transfer loophole represents another subtle frontier to overcome at the core of the land issue in Amazonia.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. In the first case study, the production is based on the fruits from the Euterpe precatoria, while in the second and third cases, from the Euterpe oleracea palm (Castro et al., 2015).

2. Traditionally, açaí is a thick and homogeneous tincture that is consumed like a sauce over fish or as a dessert (like mousse). It is made out of the fruits skin and thin pulp layer, which are separated mechanically from the seed (by hand or with a machine called batedora) and mixed with water, resulting in a mixture that may have a think-creamy or a light-soft texture.

3. Because of the practical constraints given by the scope of the research (time and funds), I decided to speak methodologically about micro-ethnographies. Grounded ethnographic fieldwork usually requires much longer time spent in the field. Brondizio´s above mentioned study, for instance, is based upon more than a decade of working with Caboclo people.

4. Since the ratification of the 1988 Brazilian Constitution (Art. 231), the Brazilian law distinguishes three major groups of people in Amazonia: the traditional people, of heterogenic ethnic and cultural heritage (migrants and settlers); the indigenous people, with a large historically traceable cultural attachment to the land claimed to be owned; and the quilombolas, constituted by slave descendants of African origin. The legal recognition of land access in the frame of the Brazilian Legal Amazon programme require compulsory anthropological research to determine if the practices of the community actually match the claimed category of land use, tenure and management rights (Kohler & Brondízio, 2017; Packer, 2015).

5. Some of the historical geopolitical characterizations of Amazonia include: the land of female warriors populated by fantastic flora and fauna (XVII – XVIII Century); planetary pharmacy and rich source of raw material (XIX- first half of XX Century); lungs of the world (second half XX Century); Biodiversity and extinction (XXI Century). The notion of exuberant wilderness remains across time. (Davidov, 2013; Hecht, 2011; Nazarea, 2006; Raffles, 1999; Ullán de la Rosa, 2004; Viveiros de Castro, 1996; Wagner, 2012; Walker, 2012).

6. Particularly the first and second cases studies will deepen in the analysis of the dynamic between institutions; qualitatively describing the correlation between the absence of regulation (from sanitary community conditions to land tenure situation) and the chains´ length.

7. Source: dredf.org. Emphasis added here by the author.

8. Terra Legal is the main Brazilian land regularization programme. Launched in 2002 was expected to issue 300.000 land tenure titles in the first five years. According to Campbell (2015, p. 49), up to Mai 2015, Terra Legal has just delivered 1000 titles.

9. See annex 1 for a more detailed description of the methodological work.

10. I experienced difficulties in finding reliable figures for acaí production. This void could be the topic of another article, aimed at explaining how the political disonances among institutions impact the generation and publication of quantitive data used for land-use land-management planning. Furthermore, I would like to notice that this study is based on qualitative research methods and therefore, its possible contribution should be understood accordingly.

11. The spaces of the urban and the rural in Amazonia are connected and related in a continuum (Alexíades & Peluso, 2016; Castro-Coma & Martí-Costa, 2016). The cultural practices and the self-attached identity, as observable through that continuum, provide more clues about the boundaries between the rural and the urban than the surrounding infrastructure or the landscape. The urban space given by the city square (the local space par excellence) is temporarily indigenized with the presence of the NTFPs producers from the reservations, who take the stage of the square to perform their traditional culinary practices. Attended mostly by Tikuna-Uitoto community insiders and tourists (seeking imaginary Amazonian experiences), but normally not by the Letician local urban people. The indigenous markets´ dynamic occur in a context where spatial boundaries are established according to distinctions between urban/ rural are not physical but situational.

12. Uncertain about the water quality, urban people avoid consuming açaí concerned about health risks associated with it.

13. I will deepen on this matter in the comparative analysis and the discussion, explaning why the community-based Caboclos´ economy can be considered sustainable in terms of biocultural value.

14. Around 200.000 tons of acaí are yearly produced in Brazil. Its production supports ca. 350,000 families in the State of Pará (World Resources Institute, 2019). According to data provided by CAMTA (third case study) the State of Pará is responsible for ca. 93% of the total acaí production, from which 8% to 10% will be exported to thirty-one countries, 30% will stay in the national market to reach other Brazilian states and 60% will be consumed by the home Paraense population.

15. Acronym for ‘Sistema Agroflorestal Tomé-Açu’ (Agroforesty System Tomé-Açu). The production of açaí in the Pará State can be roughly classified in two groups: extracted from the floodplain (locally named ‘açaí da várzea’), based on the traditional NTFPs´ production practices that characterise the economy of the Caboclo population; or produced in the mainland, based on agroforestry management (‘açaí da terra firme’).

16. The context of the second node is not only the doorway for customary commercial exchange. It is also an open space to criminality: sexual abuse and human trafficking networks have been operating for decades in the Marajó region. Recently (27 July 2019), the Minister of Education Damares Alves, held a speech in situ, blaming the children’s nudity for the local sexual crimes (sic). Her announced measure to tackle the problem: create an underwear fabric, which will besides, helps to combat poverty by creating jobs. What may seem to be a very bad joke from a western-democratic perspective, is just a sample of the incompetence of the political authorities headed by the far-right president Jair Bolsonaro. (Online news source: https://orinocotribune.com/brazilian-minister-for-women-girls-are-raped-because-they-dont-wear-underwear).

Annex 1.

Methodological work

Table

Fieldwork technique	Objective	Aim
Participant observation	Rapport/ contextualise on the ground	Identification of actors (discourses/ practices)
Semi-structured interviews	Locate actors/ where, how and why	Define roles and competences
Interviews in-depth	Find out actors agencies/ who, where, how	Mapping actors and their agencies
Experts interviews	Explore perceptions of knowledge trickle-down and assymetries	Evaluate agencies in the açaí network
Focus Groups	Dialogic exchange among different actors	Analysis of practices, conflicts and possible outcomes
Peer-debriefing	Explore boundaries and connections with other scholars	Interdisciplinary data exchange/ double-check