When it decided, in April 2011, to produce Buriti oil from a supply chain with a direct relationship with Natura, the company faced a significant mission: to produce sufficient information about the species and develop the necessary processes to organize the production chain, standardize farmers' practices to obtain raw material with the quality needed for product formulation, and secure the ingredient in greater volume and quality. The experience was so successful that it generated a manual of good practices that today contributes to the training of rural producers, the structuring of an agro-industry processing the oil, and the generation of employment and income for the members of a cooperative of agro-extractivists from family farming.
Project Initiation
As usual when identifying a species with the potential to be a new ingredient, the company sought the natural habitat of the species and nearby family farmers or those working with Buriti in traditional communities, aiming to better understand its characteristics, identify potentials, and define the best strategies to carry out the work. “Finding local partners to participate in the development is important because the idea is that once this stage is completed, this chain can supply Natura's demand with the work of local people,” explains Daniel Oliveira, an agronomist who is part of Natura's Research team, responsible for prospecting new natural assets and developing production chains that meet the company's volumes.
The project in question developed the production chain of Buriti oil in the Cerrado of Northern Minas Gerais. The first step was to identify where in the cerrado there was a well-structured group close to the areas where Buriti occurs. That was when the partnership with the Grande Sertão cooperative began, located in the north of Minas Gerais, in the city of Montes Claros. The cooperative works with various communities in northern cities of the state and has as its main objective the strengthening of family farming through the mobilization and training of farmers for the production of fruit pulp and agro-extractivist products from the cerrado.
“When we stopped to analyze, asking people who already had some relationship with Buriti, we saw that it was very local with more use at home or even in a local market,” recalls Daniel. According to him, there was not much technical information about the plant. For example, it was not known how many fruits a tree produced or how often harvesting could be done.
Development of Production Practices for the Buriti Oil Chain
Studies were conducted to monitor the yield in pulp of the fruit – it is from the pulp that the oil is extracted – the production capacity of the trees, what the good practices are for managing the buritizais, and the production of dry pulp, which adds value to the product and allows for the renewal of the buritizais by retaining seeds in the community, thus generating greater social and environmental gains compared to supplying the fruit in natura. From this, a first booklet was developed to assist in the training of producers. There was a need to standardize a series of practices to scale up production and ensure a uniform product in the end, without neglecting environmental care. The visual format of the material, with little text and plenty of illustrations, seemed quite accessible for the farmers. “It is a work where we start from what the farmer already does, from what he knows, from what he would understand would be easier for him to do,” comments the engineer.
The result of this work was a more elaborate manual, produced by Natura's Bioagriculture area. All the information produced by the research was compiled in this material. Surveys and monitoring that were part of the project were conducted in partnership with the Grande Sertão Cooperative. The Instituto Sociedade,
Population and Nature, Central do Cerrado, and UFMG also contributed to its conception.
In addition to the recommendations for managing the buritizais, the Good Practices Manual for Buriti Production provides tips on producing dry shavings and Buriti fruit, both knowledge built jointly with the producers. “Buriti is a plant that fruits every two years. With the rural producers, we learned that the production of dry shavings increases the durability of this raw material. We developed practices based on this dry shaving and scaled it up,” says Daniel. These and other learnings were included in the manual, which is now an important ally for farmers who currently have Buriti as a source of income. “This generates a social benefit because these people start to have an income, an activity, a learning experience. And it also generates environmental value because the rural producer starts to care for this plant and preserve it, while also taking care of its ecosystem, a very fragile and threatened environment,” he assesses.
These dry shavings are processed in the cooperative's own agro-industry, structured with the support of Natura, through a process developed by the research and development team of ingredients. As a consequence of all this structuring and training work, the oil generated in this process can be supplied directly to Natura, without the need for intermediary companies, which usually carry out processes to qualify the oil produced by agro-industries.
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