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Fruit trees and useful plants in Amazonian life
,QFRPH IURP WKH ´IUXLW RI WKH SRRUµ Sr. Roxinho Roxinho’s peri-urban home in the municipality of Acara, a 40-minute boat ride from Belém, initially had 6 uxis on 1 ha. After 30 years, he has 60 uxis on 10 ha. Sometimes he even cuts down a cupuaçu or another fruit tree in favour of an uxi. To discover the economic value of uxi, Roxinho and a group of researchers marked off 1 ha of his property and kept track of all the fruits that were sold from this hectare. During the harvest of 1996, in only two months (February and March), Roxinho earned US$475 selling uxis from that hectare. Even discounting the costs of transportation and labour, uxi is more profitable than other fruits because it produces large quantities. In one year, an average of 20% of Sr. Roxinho’s and his neighbours’ income originated from the sale of uxi fruit.2 Apart from uxi, Roxinho has many other fruit trees on his land, like biribá, pupunha, piquiá and cupuaçu. The diversity of productive fruit trees on his property is due to his hard work, experimentation and innovative management practices. Without discounting all the expenses, he earned US$1 181 in 1996 from fruit sales from that one hectare alone. To ensure production into the future, Roxinho is careful to choose the best seeds from the most productive trees to plant. The harvest of uxi supplies most of his income and his neighbours’ incomes as well. His family waits for the uxi season to be able to buy extra things for the house or for the children, such as clothing, books, notebooks, tools and pans. And guess what kind of wood he uses to build his house?
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