Oxfam in Brazil - The multi-talented nut
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Cindha shows Tony Robinson where the babassu
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Photo: Daniel Berinson/Oxfam
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The babassu palm tree has a great many uses. The people in Ludovico,
in northern Brazil, eat the nuts, use the husks for firewood and
the palm fronds for roofing their huts; the timber is used for
the walls; and there are medicinal uses too. The oil that’s
pressed from the nuts is multi-purpose too. It can be used for
cooking, or to moisturise skin, and it can be turned into lipstick
or soap.
In 1985, powerful local landowners tried to stop people collecting
babassu nuts from the palm trees growing on common land. They didn’t
succeed. The people tore down the barbed-wire fences which had been
put up to stop them, and continued to harvest the nuts in defiance
of the landowners’ threats.
Eventually, following violent clashes and the assassination, by
hired gunmen, of 150 people, (including women and children, and
priests), the landowners gave in, granting the community their right
to harvest the nuts again.
Oxfam GB supports an organisation called ASSEMA, which has helped
the women of Ludovico to form a co-operative, through which they
collect and break babassu nuts and sell them for a much better price
than they used to receive on the open market. In the old days, ten
sacks of nuts would buy one sack of rice, but now it’s a straight
swap -- one sack of nuts for a sack of rice.
The people of Ludovico also sell the liquid oil direct to northern
European companies such as The Body Shop.
There is a women’s group at the Ludovico Factory, where oil
from the nuts is turned into soap. Together, the women make decisions
about marketing and distribution, and with the help of ASSEMA they
are developing further products.
In the summer 1998, Tony Robinson (Blackadder, Time Team)
went to visit ASSEMA. You can read
about his visit here.
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