06/16/2024 – 13:37
Generating products and services that are combined with the conservation and regeneration of biodiversity is the principle of bioeconomy, an economic model that is gaining more and more space in debates on solutions to promote development that is at the same time social, economic and environmental.
In the state of Pará, discomfort with a problem caused by the region’s food culture led businesswoman Ingrid Teles to come up with an idea to solve the large volume of seeds discarded daily by businesses in the production of açaí pulp. In 2017, she began research, which, in 2022, resulted in the creation of a cosmetics company.
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“It was looking at this volume of waste that I started looking for a solution that could be a business model, but that also contributed socially. Then, I started producing açaí soaps using the seeds and in a circular bioeconomy structure”, observes Ingrid.
Açaí
To give you an idea, only 26.5% of açaí is edible, the rest has fiber and seeds, considered waste in the food chain. Added to this is the fact that Pará is the largest national producer of açaí, responsible for 93.87% of Brazilian production. In 2023 alone, the harvest recorded 1.6 million tons of fruit, according to the 2023 Municipal Agricultural Production (PAM) survey, carried out by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE).
As a native fruit of the region, cocoa has knowledge about its management and processing rooted in the region’s traditional communities.
Like açaí, cocoa is abundant in floodplain soil, which also makes it a strong product for a bioeconomy model in the Amazon.
This tradition was decisive in the emergence of a company that processes cocoa for products used in health therapies and ceremonies, led only by women.
One of the partners, Noanny Maia, said that, in 2020, she brought together her mother and two sisters in an endeavor to resume a business left by her father and the legacy of four generations of cocoa production, in the municipality of Mocajuba, in the interior of Pará.
“When we arrived in the region we were faced with a reality of environmental degradation that impacted cocoa producing families in an impressive way, with a lot of poverty and especially women in situations of vulnerability and even violence. It was no longer the abundance it was in my grandfather’s time,” she recalls.
Driven by the desire to improve the quality of life of neighboring families and positively impact the cocoa chain, they created a company that currently absorbs the cocoa production of 15 families and processes the beans into 100% cocoa bars, nibs (almond less processed) and granola, in addition to producing jelly, candles and foot baths. “We make the most of the vertical integration of cocoa,” stated the businesswoman.
Fortification
The two projects are part of the National Bioeconomy Strategy launched by presidential decree at the beginning of June, which demonstrates the Brazilian government’s interest in strengthening public policies that favor this economic system. The subject is also the subject of an initiative proposed during the G20 in Brazil. The G20 is a group made up of finance ministers and central bank heads from the world’s 19 largest economies, plus the African Union and the European Union. It was created in 1999.
In the Amazon, the bioeconomy has been consolidating long before governments and international organizations debated the subject. According to the superintendent director of the Micro and Small Business Support Service (Sebrae) of Pará, Rubens Magno, the use of natural resources associated with the preservation of the forest is an ancient practice among the traditional peoples of the Amazon.
“These ancestral people have been doing this for many years, but they often don’t realize that they have this knowledge and they also don’t realize the value of the Amazon and the value that people from outside give to the forest”, he highlighted.
Market
With projections of a market that could reach US$8.1 billion per year, by 2050, in the Amazon alone, the bioeconomy is growing mainly among micro and small entrepreneurs. According to Magno, this is the result of work to strengthen this scenario with the establishment of a Sebrae bioeconomy hub in the city of Santarém, responsible for taking many of these entrepreneurs out of informality.
At this hub, the institution launched, on Thursday (13), a network to integrate all actors in the bioeconomy – researchers, government institutions, investors and entrepreneurs.
“We are placing different actors to dialogue and expose their knowledge in a transversal way, to strengthen all the entities involved and, in this way, make startups grow, investors participate and governments of all spheres see this local power ”, he explained.
For Magno, the objective until the 30th United Nations Climate Conference (COP30), which will be held in November 2025, in Belém, is that the bioeconomy in the region can translate into an economic system strengthened by social development that adds value to natural resources, keeping the forest preserved. “We want to show the power of the forest to the world, with the bioeconomy as our strength”, he concluded.
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