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BabaCu Project
he Project will promote virtuous cycles of resource use minimization by designing processes and facilities to allow material reuse and nutrient recycling. Nothing is wasted.
achieving progress of the different communities comprised within the Project’s area of influence will always be a key objective. “Progress” will be measured based on the real needs of each community.
the economic sustainability of the Project lays on its potential to generate high quality Carbon Credits. Biochar will be produced and “sunk” into the ground to generate long term carbon sequestration, thus creating a robust means to channel the so much needed green investments against Climate Change.
to be able to sink the Biochar, land is needed. Lot’s of it! The Project will purchase as much degraded land as it possibly can to enrich it with Biochar and then restore those lands through regenerative agriculture management or reforestation.
It is our area of action with some 20 million hectares of babaçu palms. Yearly producing about 55 MM MT of the coco-like babaçu nut. The top management is very familiarized with and well established in the area. Several members of the middle management, as all workers and suppliers, are born here, with wide experience and devoted to babaçu for their future.
Babaçu is a kind of palm tree, autochthonous to the Amazonas rainforest and its surrounding transition forests. It produces the babaçu nut, a large, hard fruit which hangs in large bunches from the trees. All of the nut can be used for different purposes, with the appropriate technology, although today only the almonds deep inside the nut are being used, which are commercialized to produce a very healthy and edible oil, as well as animal feed.
Babaçu grows naturally in and around the whole Amazonas rainforest. It is calculated that babaçu grows on more than 100 million hectares, representing by far the world's largest source of perfectly edible oil. Only in the northeast region of Brazil some 20 million hectares of babaçu trees are estimated to exist. As to this day, only about 4% of this area is being harvested. Whys is this? mainly due to a lack of adequate development and suitable resources to effectively harvest the babaçu nuts.
As many abandoned and semi wild donkeys as possible will be seized, recovered and made fully operational. They will be then equipped with specially designed, purpose built and ergonomic babaçu nut transport kits.
Three recovered and equipped jumentos are handed over to each pre qualified babaçu nut harvester under a Beneficial Owner Agreement. Each B.O. can now harvest 33 times more with a quarter of the effort; 660 kg every day, 300 days per year.
Harvested babaçu nuts are gathered in Hamlet Hubs. Harvesters receive a fair price for their collected nuts, which allows them to more than triple their income. They are provided a bank account and payment includes social services contribution
Nuts are transported to the Processing Plant where they are stored, cracked and separated into 4 different value streams:: Epicarp to generate energy; Mesocarp for feed; Endocarp to produce Biochar; and Almonds to produce oil and biodiesel. Nothing is wasted.
Biochar is produced in the Processing Plant by enriching the charcoal produced from the Endocarp with natural nutrients. This Biochar is then sunk in the degraded soils as a natural amendment, generating at the same time Carbon Credits. Those soils are then managed under Regenerative Agriculture concepts.
Other by products from the Process are a high quality babaçu oil from the almonds, with high commercial value, along with the nutritious materials Mesocarp and Almond press cake. These two products are excellent animal feed ingredients, for example, for laying hens to produce natural eggs.
