Today, wherever you go, açaí is there. The fruit is consumed in every Brazilian state and in approximately 70 other countries, though in a different way from the peculiar Amazonian style - accompanied by fried fish, shrimp, jerked beef, and amazon flour.
Sugar confectionery and sorbets dominate the market, offering "açaized" products, filled with banana, granola and powdered milk. Such cultural changes stem from economic and ecological transformations, focusing on the riverine life and floodplain forests of the Amazon estuary
Archaeological records and travel reports by naturalists from the 18th and 19th centuries, show evidence that açaí crops have been cultivated throughout the Amazonian floodplain forests for centuries.
The riparian landscape along with this species classified as Euterpe oleracea Mart in 1824, have inspired the imaginary literature of Jules Verne (A Jangada, 1881) and the impressionist paintings of Paul Gauguin have undergone significant transformations, justified by the management of the floodplain forest based on local techniques that resulted in the formation of açai groves and, later, in the process of “açaization”, that is, the intensification of açai groves management which led to the dominance of this palm tree in the landscape.
From the 1980’s on, research conducted by Antonhy Anderson and other colleagues from the Goeldi Museum on the management of the riparian floodplain forests have helped to form the idea that forest people handled their areas by diversifying and ensuring conservation and socio-environmental sustainability. This knowledge strongly influenced the creation of extractive reserves throughout the region. Additionally, in the same period, the current regional economy of açaí was consolidated, with the expansion of fruit production, in response to the growing demand for açaí in the urban centers of the region.
But it was during the mid-1990s that açaí started to supply national and international markets, leading to the monoculture production logic. In the 2000s, Mario Hiraoka, a visiting researcher at the Goeldi Museum, observed the process of ‘açaization of the landscape’ and questioned about the sustainability of the exploitation of açaí fruits, which was soon noticed by other researchers, such as Stephanie Weinstein, Alfredo Homma, Eduardo Brondízio, among others.
What our recent studies have brought into evidenced is that intensive management at very high density of açai trees (more than 400 clumps/ha), in fact, has substantially altered the floodplain forests, both taxonomically and functionally, in a way that these forests no longer support a species diversity of plants and animals capable of guaranteeing the ecological processes necessary for its own maintenance. And this brings consequences for the loss of biodiversity and impacts on ecosystem services provided by the floodplain forests, and also on fruit production, as the pollination of açaí flowers is highly dependent on the service performed by insects.
The expansion of the açaí economy from a local to a global scale and from a staple food to a superfood, has made it a globalized species, exploited in systems of low ecological sustainability. The expansion of the market undoubtedly contributes to the income generation for riparian families, but for how long? It is important to think about how can the large-scale use and commercialization of açaí encourage the preservation of the native forest and become a symbol of its sustainable use?
‘Listening’ to the voice of science is the solution.
For a long time, Dr Francisco de Assis Costa has demonstrated the need to refrain the advance of homogenizing productive course patterns and to guarantee a development strategy that takes into account local economic systems and the interests of regional populations in the Amazon. And, in this regard, the case of açaí leads us to consider incorporating low-impact management, as advocated by Embrapa, in public policies to support the riparian socio-bioeconomy, and make this production chain ecologically sustainable.
