On August 18, 19 and 20, the 11th edition of the Tomé-Açu Agroforestry System Seminar was held. The main theme was “Agroforestry Systems and the Bioeconomy in the Amazon: Challenges and Opportunities.” It was attended by a variety of domestic and international organizations related to agriculture and the environment.
Among other talks and debates, Bia Marchiori, an agronomist at Fundo Vale, gave a presentation about the results and next steps of Vale’s 2030 Forest Goal. She also shared Fundo Vale’s strategy for achieving this goal, based on investments in social and environmental impact businesses. One of the enterprises that is contributing to this work is CAMTA, a farming cooperative in Tomé-Açu, which was recently pre-selected in an agroforestry business mapping exercise. This cooperative is helping its members to implement agroforestry systems on their land and reduce the destruction of old-growth forest.
“As well as learning about CAMTA’s experience and the work of various public and private sector organizations, and talking about possible synergies with different partners, I also had the opportunity to present some of the results and next steps of Vale’s Forest Goal and Fundo Vale’s strategy to tackle this challenge, restoring habitat by investing in businesses with positive social and environmental impacts,”
BIA Marchiori, AGRONOMIST
The development of agroforestry systems in Tomé-Açu began in the 1970s, when different plants, fruits and forest products were grown together in areas where black pepper monoculture was on the decline.
“CAMTA has pioneering experience with agroforestry systems. In addition to the possibility of having them as partners in the Forest Goal’s pipeline, all their expertise in this area is very valuable. We want to share it with the businesses we are already supporting and use it to strengthen the agroforestry systems we intend to support in the coming years. For us, learning from these farmers, who have a practical, everyday vision, is extremely rich and informative,” Marchiori says.