Ribeirinhas gain quality of life with chocolate in Pará – 10/20/2023 – Environment

In a small air-conditioned room with white-painted wooden walls, the sweet aroma fills the atmosphere. It comes from the melanger, a machine that mixes cocoa mass with brown sugar and transforms the ingredients into dark, shiny chocolate.

The scene takes place periodically in the heart of the Amazon, in the riverside community of Acará-Açu (PA), where around 160 families live.

Those responsible for the small Acaráçu fine chocolate factory are eight women, who call themselves Guardians of Cocoa.

“I went to the city several times, but it didn’t work out very well. I couldn’t accept myself living here, seeing my life here”, says Valdenilda Pereira, 30. “Then, after we started doing this work , I started to look differently, think differently. Now, if you ask me if I want to leave here, no. Never.”

Like her fellow chocolate makers, in 2021 she was invited by her neighbor Luciene Gemaque, 34, to participate in a workshop there and learn the step-by-step process of the entire manufacturing process — from harvesting the fruit, to the slow fermentation of the seeds. of cocoa, drying, roasting and grinding them, until they are transformed into sweets.

The difference between Amazonian cocoa

The organization around cocoa began with her brother, Zeno Gemaque, 39, who sought out Amazonian chocolatier César De Mendes, son of a quilombola mother and a riverside father, to sell the fruits produced in the region. The trees grow naturally on the properties or are planted one by one in the middle of the forest.

“Today the society has 38 partners, who own small plots of land around here”, explains Zeno, adding that the network’s work includes offering qualifications to producers. “We go to the property, do training on the harvest, the right cocoa maturation point, the selection of fruits that are good for producing fine chocolate and those that are not.”

The seeds (or almonds) that are not suitable for refined production are sold, while the others are collected and taken in portions of 300 to 450 kg to fermentation troughs that are next to the factory. This stage lasts, on average, six days.

“During this period, all the magic happens. We take cocoa that was going to be sold as a commodity market and transform it into a product with high added value. Practically the same thing as wine, for example.”

For those who may think that the comparison with the drink is exaggerated, De Mendes —who owns a fine chocolate factory and was the one who gave the first course for the Guardians of Cacau— points out the influence of the region’s terroir on Amazonian chocolates.

“The geographic variables, which are soil, water, light, surrounding vegetation, they generate a microbiota, a microbial balance. So, when [as amêndoas] They come to the fermentation troughs, these microorganisms come with them”, he states. “The microorganisms that work in cocoa fermentation are many. Here, in the Amazon, there are around 150. On average, in the world, there are 78”.

Less than two years after the workshop with De Mendes, there are several products carefully organized on a shelf inside the riverside factory: bars of pure cocoa, semi-sweet chocolates (with 70%, 60% and 50% cocoa in the composition ), milk chocolate, Brazil nuts or cupuaçu candy covered in chocolate. From harvest to final product, it takes around 25 days.

Community mobilization

Luciene says that the idea for the factory only went forward because it came from the community itself, as opposed to external projects. “Normally, the model is already ready and they tell us what we have to do. Nobody asks about what we already do, what we already have in our backyard”, she reports.

“There are places here that, for [a mensagem] arrive, it has to be us”, he says. “People feel so marginalized that to be able to involve them in a process like this, it’s not so simple”.

The convincing process involved empowering women and convincing men, who often did not want to let their wives get involved in the activity.

Although the new business is still no more than a supplement to income, cocoa has touched the community. Some young people created a group to discuss culture and awareness, others are producing seedlings of native species, women are trying handicrafts and nine families are mobilizing to transform their backyards into agroforests.

“We are planting things that no one else is planting”, says the group’s founder, Izabela da Cunha Campos, 25, who is also a chocolate maker and president of the community’s residents’ association. She says that in agroforests, local species are prioritized, instead of trying to plant what comes from outside in Amazonian soil.

She, who always liked working with the land, now has much of what she previously needed to buy in her backyard — but she guarantees that the objective of the initiative is not profit. “Our project has to be for our quality of life, for us to live well,” she says.

For Izabela’s mother, Valdirene da Cunha, 46, who is also a Cocoa Guardian, it was worth all the effort of waking up at 3am and burning several blenders until she was able to get the chocolate factory up and running.

“The feeling is that everything we started encouraged other people to do different things. They saw that within our community, which is riverside, it is possible to have leisure, to have something good to eat”, he says. “Our intention is not to stay in this little group that we have, of eight women. It is to take it to other families, to other communities.”

The standing forest economy

This potential multiplication would help to further strengthen a form of economic organization that goes beyond formal records.

“We know that this socio-biodiversity economy in the Amazon effectively employs a lot of people and is not captured by official statistics”, says the coordinator of the low-carbon economy portfolio at the Climate and Society Institute, Gustavo Pinheiro.

Pará is the leader in cocoa production in Brazil. According to the 2022 Systematic Survey of Agricultural Production, by IBGE (Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics), the state accounts for 50.68% of the total.

A recent study by the Brazilian arm of the World Resources Institute shows that the country can stop deforestation in the Amazon and simultaneously experience economic growth in all major sectors if it undertakes a large-scale transformation.

The changes would include using sustainable farming techniques in existing productive areas; restore degraded regions; boost low-carbon technologies; and invest in bioeconomy.

Thus, according to the analysis, the GDP of the Legal Amazon could grow by more than R$40 billion per year until 2050, compared to maintaining the current production system, and 312 thousand new jobs would be created, benefiting local communities.

The reporter traveled at the invitation of the Climate and Society Institute.