Implementing Agency:
Department For International Development (LACAD)

Managing Institute:
Institute for Socio-Economic Development of Para (IDESP)

Contractor:
Tocantins Agarian Centre (CAT)

Project Code: 087-502-011	Start Date: 01-Apr-91	End Date: 01-Dec-95
Commitment: £1,526,900	Status: Completed	Type of Funding: Bilateral - TC

Project Background:
The Brazil Nut Polygon of Para (Poligono de Castanhais) is a region of over one million hectares around Maraba, rich in Brazilnut trees. For over fifty years, Brazil nuts have been harvested by many families, for whom they represented an important element, lasting up to four months, in their annual cycle of activities. The opening of the Belem-Brasilia Highway in the 1950s and Transamazonica Highway in the 1970s brought a sudden increase in the demand for land from land speculators and landless immigrant settlers from other parts of Brazil. Intense competition developed among business and private interests to take over first the trade and later the land of the Brazilnut forests (castanhais), and very large areas came into private hands (in fact and/or in law). The new land barons were less interested in the Brazil nut trade than in ranching and logging, and widespread land clearing followed. Meanwhile, widespread spontaneous occupation of castanhais by settlers, uncontrolled logging, and felling of trees for charcoal for the iron smelters of Carajas were also taking their toll of the forest cover. IDESP estimates from satellite images that 40 percent of the forest cover in the Poligono de Castanhais has been cleared by 1988. The confrontation over land between ranchers, loggers, land speculators and settlers led to increasing conflict and rural violence, which reached a peak in the mid-eighties. Eventually, several properties were purchased from large landowners by the then Ministry of Land Reform (MIRAD), with the intention of developing settlement schemes for small farmers. In the event, only one castanhal property, Araras, was officially settled by MIRAD. The remainder were merely divided into 50 ha plots in an attempt to regularise the status quo, in effect (but not in law) establishing the tenure of settler families occupying castanhais. About 250 000 ha of the Brazilnut Polygon are now settled. The 50ha plots contain areas under slash and burn agriculture, small areas of traditional and non traditional tree crops and significant areas under pasture planted by the settlers. Normally the Brazilnut trees are left standing in cleared areas. Unfortunately the Brazilnut tree is very susceptible to damage by the fires that are used in slash and burn and in pasture management and many trees are killed unintentionally. Regeneration of young trees in also prevented. An additional factor to bear in mind is the nearby development of the Carajas industrial corridor, of which the town of Maraba is a designated pole. The development of the iron and steel industry in the region has created a strong demand for charcoal, which is met by thousands of artisanal charcoal burners. The farming systems used by the settlers are simple modifications of systems used in their regions of origin. They are quite distinct from the long-established systems used by generations of ribeirinhos, who farm beside the main rivers in Amazonia, with methods often borrowed from previous Indian inhabitants. They are often sustainable and inadequate, maintaining neither the productive capacity of the site nor an acceptable living standard for the small farmers. With no access to credit or extension services, and always in remote areas, farming systems evolve around the production of rice, with some maize, beans, manioc and cattle, often clearing new areas of forest each year. Farmers have few alternatives for their subsistence and cash needs other than clearing new land or selling Brazilnut and other trees for timber and charcoal. When timber companies persuade settlers to sell their trees, the roads they build for extracting logs are often as great an incentive as the (derisory) prices offered. So, in spite of laws relating to conservation of forest areas on each plot, and the expressed desire of settlers not to destroy the forest with its resources of Brazilnuts, the area of forest continues to decline.

Project Objectives:
The wider objectives of this project are: To promote sustained production on small farms and to discourage forest destruction in the Maraba area of Para State. To test and demonstrate improved tree and forest use and management and farming systems for sustained production suitable for small farms. The immediate objectives are: To assist the small farmers of pilot areas near Maraba to improve their farming and marketing systems. To carry out trials of improved crops, farming and agro-forestry methods and treatments of secondary forests.