The cooperative markets products from over 40 community organizations across nine Brazilian states.
Jatobá flour, babaçu oil, pequi nuts, non-GMO corn flakes, macaúba coconut soap, and baru nuts. These are some of the items marketed by the Central Cooperative of the Cerrado.
Built in 2004, the project aims to promote the value of products from the socio-biodiversity of the Amazon, Cerrado, and Caatinga biomes, and to guarantee income for traditional peoples and communities of these biomes so that they can conserve territories, landscapes, and ways of life.
"Here, commercialization is a means and not an end to achieve this goal," explains the organization's executive secretary, Luis Carrazza.
Born from a collective of organizations supported by the ISPN's strategy for the Promotion of Productive Eco-social Landscapes (PPP-ECOS), Central do Cerrado markets products from more than 40 community organizations in nine Brazilian states: Bahia, Maranhão, Minas Gerais, Mato Grosso, Mato Grosso do Sul, Tocantins, Pará, Goiás, and Piauí.
The products come from agro-extractive practices, which involve observing nature and respecting the productive and reproductive cycle of trees, and whose sales generate income for families through the conservation of native vegetation. For this reason, they are structured in sustainable production chains – which prioritize care for the water cycle, climate regulation, and biodiversity conservation.
Partnerships
After achieving a more solid level of management and structure, the organizations that built Central do Cerrado initially sought to expand the marketing of their products beyond their regions – thus reaching more locations in the country and also abroad.
“We decided to set up a central sales office to have a shared team and strategy instead of each company developing its own way of working,” says Luís.
Community-based enterprises working together in this partnership could offer a diverse range of products in quantities that would make sense within the framework of collective marketing procedures. The idea was to generate and distribute income to the communities, as well as improve the quality of life for the surrounding population.
One of the organizations that make up the Central is the Cooperative of Sustainable Family Farming Based on the Solidarity Economy (Copabase), located in Arinos, a municipality in northwestern Minas Gerais. Copabase focuses on the production, processing, and commercial-level family farming, using products from the Cerrado's biodiversity. The organization is based in a territory self-identified as Grande Sertão Veredas.
The cooperative covers more than 10 municipalities in the territory, including more than 40 rural communities in agrarian reform settlements, as well as traditional communities.
Copabase's objectives are aligned with those of Central do Cerrado, namely, supporting rural families by encouraging income generation, as well as creating a territorial identity through opportunities, competitiveness, and product volume.
Dionete Figueiredo, executive coordinator of Copabase, grew up in a traditional farming community and has been part of the organization since its creation. She celebrates the partnership with Central do Cerrado. "It's a partnership that is increasingly strengthened by this market structure, logistics, and representation."
Other experiences
Approximately 1,8 km from Copabase, in northern Maranhão, lies the Cooperative of Small Agro-Extractive Producers of Lago do Junco, known as COPPALJI. This community-based enterprise is part of the Central do Cerrado cooperatives and specializes in the production and marketing of babassu coconut oil.
Founded in 1991 and headquartered in the municipalities of Lago do Junco, Lago dos Rodrigues, and Bom Lugar, COPPALJ's main objective is to guarantee a better quality of life for the babaçu coconut breakers in the region, providing access to public policies on housing, education, and health, while also ensuring a fair price for the sale of coconut kernels.
This is explained by Ricardo Araújo, technical advisor at COPPALJ, who adds that the project seeks to balance the economic, social, and environmental aspects of the cooperative's region.
"It's no use for the cooperative to make a profit if the environment is harmed. Social and environmental responsibility is an obligation."
Today, the cooperative brings together 230 babaçu coconut breakers from 45 different communities. The work is distributed across nine storage and sales locations, called canteens, which buy almonds and sell other goods. Each canteen has its own specific discussion space to talk about management, operations, and other related topics.
COPPALJ has also been working to strengthen babassu management plans, considering the environmental impacts of extractive activities. "It is necessary to conserve young palm trees and respect the different phases of the plant," says Ricardo.
"We created a manual about this based on the collective agreements we have for the use of babassu," he adds.
Regarding the partnership with Central do Cerrado, Ricardo recalls that it predates the formalization of the group and that COPPALJ always seeks to strengthen it. "Central do Cerrado has opened up a range of possibilities for us, with direct sales, participation in fairs, and spaces with renowned chefs."
At the fairs
Since the early 2000s, the enterprises that founded Central do Cerrado participated in meetings and fairs to discuss the sale of their produce. During that period, PPP-ECOS had already accumulated more than a decade of knowledge and support for community organizations.
The Cooperative was formally established as an entity only in 2010, having been incubated within the Institute for Society, Population and Nature (ISPN). "I was a technician and worked focusing on creating a marketing strategy for the products of the PPP-ECOS projects," states the executive secretary.
The lessons learned over the years of work have been to operate across multiple sales channels to ensure the financial sustainability of Central, through direct sales to consumers, the preparation of cocktails and snacks, online sales, a physical store in Brasília, and also through resellers, sales in specialty stores, large retail markets, sales of raw materials to industry, and exports.
Online sales, both through Central do Cerrado's own store and on major online sales platforms, as well as access to supermarket chains and retail in general, have resulted in increased business viability.
The partnership with the Carrefour supermarket chain, which has already lasted two years, guarantees a dedicated shelf in all of the brand's stores in the Federal District. Now the cooperative also supplies baru nuts to 40 more stores in the city of São Paulo, and other products to 17 hypermarkets.
To learn more about the Cooperative, purchase products, and view recipes, visit the website. website.
PPP-ECOS
In 1994, ISPN was selected to coordinate the Small Grants Programme (SGP) in Brazil, where it became known as the Small Eco-social Projects Programme.
In 2019, PPP-ECOS transforms into a Institutional strategy to promote Productive Eco-social Landscapes, through four pillars: access to resources, political articulation, community leadership, and knowledge management.
In Brazil, the initiative has already supported more than 890 projects in the Cerrado, Caatinga, and Amazon biomes. Learn more. here.
Internationally recognized as a program supporting community projects, the Small Grants Programme operates in 125 countries with funding from the Global Environment Facility (GEF) and implementation by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).
* Cover photo of the article is of a product stand in the Central do Cerrado warehouse in Brasília-DF, taken by Raimundo Sampaio/Agência Cajuí. Text by Camila Araujo/Communications Advisor.