Development & Aid, Environment, Tierramerica

Amazon Nuts at Exploitative Prices

LA PAZ, Oct 5 2009 (IPS) - The low pay for harvesting Brazil nuts in the Amazon has allowed Bolivia to become the world's leading exporter of this forest-grown food.

Bolivia is the world's leading exporter of the shelled Brazil nut, a nutritious food that is abundant in the warm, damp Amazon region. But in this paradise, many of the nut gatherers live in hell.

Bolivians simply call the Bertholletia excelsa a “nut.” Globally, it is generally known as the Brazil nut or the Pará nut, while in South America it has many other traditional names.

It is a food rich in selenium and other minerals, as well as proteins, carbohydrates and oils. It represents 30 percent of the Amazon forest revenues in the northern Bolivian departments of Pando and Beni, bordering Brazil. In fact, nut collection is the main local economic activity, following the decline of natural latex extraction in the mid-1980s.

But the competitive price of the Bolivian product brings with it a heavy component of exploitation of poor families, including children and adolescents.

That is the warning of a study by the Ministry of Labor, the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), and the Dutch development organization HIVOS), and drafted by the Center for Labor and Agrarian Development Studies (CEDLA).

Collecting nuts puts workers and their families in a situation of extreme vulnerability, according to the study.

Poverty, exclusion from labor rights and “cruel” exploitation are the norm in the collection of nuts in the northern Bolivian Amazon, according to CEDLA researcher Bruno Rojas.

In the 2008 season, which lasts from November to March, nut gathering mobilized some 17,000 people in Pando, Rojas told Tierramérica.

Nut exports in that period represented 75 percent of the region's economic movement. Data from the Bolivian Institute of Foreign Commerce indicate that exports reached 80 million dollars and created jobs for 30,000 people, including those in nut processing and transport.

Under the “piecework” mode, each worker receives 11 to 17 dollars per 23-kilogram box of nuts, which requires 12 to 14 hours of labor.

It is relatively little pay when one considers that it requires the worker to put in more than the eight hours stipulated by labor legislation, and to achieve a full box often means including the whole family in the effort.

In last year's harvest, the nut company owners caused an artificial drop in the price of the 23-kilo box from 17 dollars to just three dollars, according to María Saravia, communications secretary of the Confederation of Indigenous Peoples of Bolivia.

This practice is common among the owners and wholesalers, in order to “reduce their obligations to the nut gathering families and then ignore the payment of adequate wages during the harvest,” she said in a Tierramérica interview.

Some indigenous peoples who obtained government recognition of their lands can get better prices and deliver their products to whomever offers the best price, but the workers and their dependents who come from other regions are subject to the whims of the wholesalers, Saravia added.

“This is an ongoing fight for a change in the lives of the nut gathering families,” said the indigenous activist.

According to Rojas, “the more that is produced, the more the legal framework of labor breaks down.” Entire families make their way through the dense forest, left to their fate among the dangers of the jungle, the threat of disease and the long distances they must cover with their harvest on their backs.

“They don't have medical or accident insurance, they don't have long-term social security, and they are unprotected by labor laws and by a weak government that lacks the ability to make the company owners obey the law,” the researcher summarized.

Silvia Escóbar, CEDLA study coordinator, told Tierramérica that “often the law is negotiated, when in reality it should be obeyed. We need a government that enforces the law.”

Sixty percent of the people employed in nut harvesting and processing come from the city, and the other 40 percent are from rural areas of Beni, Pando and the far north of the department of La Paz.

The nut growing area is rain forest, situated at an average altitude of 300 meters above sea level and temperatures of 30 to 38 degrees Celsius. The trees, which grow to 50 meters, cover an area crisscrossed by rivers, study co-author Wilson Rojas told Tierramérica.

Because of its topography and soil conditions, the area is not good for raising cattle or for growing rice or root crops, he added.

Today's nut gatherers are the successors of the laborers who worked in nut, cotton and latex extraction, the Amazon products of greatest international demand in the early 20th century.

The exploitation of these raw materials in the 1920s and 30s imposed modes of labor exploitation of servitude and semi-slavery. In addition to gathering latex and nuts, the workers were required to work without pay in the homes and ranches of the large landowners, said Bruno Rojas.

In the Amazon areas of the times, a pre-capitalist economy reigned. Today, despite the many years that have passed, nut gathering is not covered by any legislation to protect the specific mode of labor rights of the workers.

According to the Ministry of Labor, in 2007 there were 2,600 children and 2,000 adolescents involved in nut gathering, and 450 children and 1,400 adolescents working in nut processing.

In the cracking, shelling and selection of the nut, two of three children in the area work five days a week between 2:00 and 7:00 in the morning, “and the lucky ones go to school at 8:00, without sleeping or eating, and they fall asleep in class,” said UNICEF representative in Bolivia, Gordon Jonathan Lewis.

“We have to do something. It is an obligation and it is a duty,” he said as a challenge to the Bolivian government when the study was presented in mid-September.

According to Escóbar, decisions must be taken to eradicate child labor in the forests and in the warehouses where the nuts are selected. Bolivia consumes just two percent of the nut harvest. Ninety-eight percent is exported to Europe, United States and Asia.

The mode of manual labor has not changed in decades. It requires the use of a machete and a box to carry the nuts, which can weigh up to 46 kilograms, he said.

Labor Minister Calixto Chipana promised to take into consideration the report in drafting the National Plan for Progressive Eradication of Child Labor, which is part of the process for overall reforms of labor laws.

Bolivia has 1.5 million children between the ages of seven and 13. Approximately 116,000 of them work in different activities. The government wants to create a “list of jobs prohibited for children,” said Chipana.