The large leaves of the aguaje, a tropical palm tree that grows in the peatlands and other seasonal wetland areas in tropical South America, form a rounded crown on its head from which its oval-shaped fruits hang heavily in bunches from December to June. When the reddish maroon reptilian-looking fruits are ready for harvest, trained tree climbers from the Indigenous Maijuna communities in the Peruvian Amazon climb the 35-meter (115-foot) gangling trees to collect them.

Previously, the Maijuna people harvested the fruit by cutting down the trees. So did many others, such as Kichwa and Kukama Kukamiria communities. While easier, this led to the degradation of the landscape and genetic diversity as aguaje trees (Mauritia flexuosa) are dioecious, meaning only female trees produce fruit. In the 1990s, the discovery of its market potential led to large-scale commercial extraction by both Indigenous communities and outsiders across the Peruvian Amazon.

“Our ancestors weren’t aware that they were harming their palm trees,” Edber Tang Rios, president of the Maijuna-Kichwa Regional Conservation Area (ACR) management committee, told Mongabay over WhatsApp voice messages. “They had no knowledge. They cut it down and, little by little, it was dying out.”

During this time, up to 100 sacks of fruit per day were harvested by cutting down trees, studies have shown. But because of overharvesting, this situation changed in the 2000s. The depletion of female palms led to a loss of income for local people and forests containing only unproductive male palms.

Since then, some Maijuna communities who live in the ACR in the northern Amazon of Peru — such as the Nueva Vida and Puerto Huamán communities — have taken steps to better conserve and manage the natural resources on their land. The community restricted upriver access by non-community members, grinding the commercial exploitation of the aguaje by outsiders to a halt. During this transition period, the Maijuna welcomed conservation organizations and protected area management experts into their communities to carry out aguaje management workshops, Rios said. Members of the community were taught how to climb trees using climbing harnesses, and aguaje management committees were formed.

These organizations helped them set up agreements with aguaje buyers in Iquitos, a nearby city where the fruit is popular. The only condition: The fruit had to be harvested sustainably.

From tree to harvest

The Maijuna people have harvested aguaje fruit for subsistence since time immemorial, they said. Like many other fruits they collect from the forest, the aguaje was harvested once it fell from the tree. But once the economic potential of the aguaje was realized in the 1990s, the Maijuna began to cut down the trees.

Few studies have measured the extent of the decline, but in 2012, a researcher found that due to the heavy felling of aguaje trees in the Pacaya Samiria National Reserve in northern Peru’s Loreto region, between 1995 and 2000, female aguaje numbers in some areas dropped from 66 to 29 per hectare (27 to 12 per acre). As a consequence, where 132 50-kilogram (110-pound) sacks were once collected, they could only collect 61, representing a 53.8% decline.

Today, the Maijuna and many others in the Amazon, such as Kichwa and Kukama Kukamiria communities, no longer cut down the trees and have implemented specific measures to avoid excessive exploitation. For example, they now complete a forest inventory to determine commercial exploitation capacity that considers other consumers of aguaje, such as red howler monkeys (Alouatta seniculus) and South American tapirs (Tapirus terrestris).

“We don’t harvest everything because animals also need to feed on that fruit,” Rios said. “If we finish it off, the animals will move away because they also seek food.”

Community members have learned how to climb trees safely, using harnesses, helmets and gloves. “To achieve this, we’ve had many workshops where other brothers who were already protecting their aguaje trees taught us how to climb them,” Rios said. “Now we are experts at climbing the aguaje tree.”

In Loreto and the central-eastern Ucayali regions, there are approximately 6 million hectares (14 million acres) of aguaje trees and each can produce between 500 to 2,000 fruit. The Nueva Vida community in the Maijuna-Kichwa ACR harvest about 20 sacks a day, Rios said. When aguaje is abundant in ports, harvesters can sell a sack for 15 Peruvian soles (about $4), according to José Alejandro Barrios Alvez Milho, a consultant for Amarumayu, a superfruits company that works with Indigenous harvesters in partnership with Peru’s Ministry of Environment and the National Service of Natural Protected Areas (SERNANP in Spanish). When there is a shortage, it is sold for up to 90 soles (about $24), similar to the average daily income of 70.69 soles ($19) in the country.

The aguaje is popular in Loreto region and has recently begun to be sold in the capital city Lima, making it available to the over 10 million people who live there. Elisabeth Lagneaux, a researcher from Wageningen University in the Netherlands, told Mongabay in an email that “the economic potential of aguaje is certainly growing, and it varies based on regions, cultural backgrounds and access to technologies, such as harvesting materials, processing facilities and cold storage and transportation.”

According to Barrios, more than 20,000 families depend on the harvest and sale of aguaje fruit for their income. But aguaje does not produce fruit all year round, meaning communities have a three-month window to collect the decided amount.

While this has led to a decline in destructive harvesting across the Peruvian Amazon, communities wishing to make a living from harvesting and selling aguaje fruits still face challenges.

From harvest to the market

Once harvested, harvesters take the fruit back to the community where it is cleaned, dried and stored in a sack.

“If the aguaje gets wet, it doesn’t ripen and is no longer good to sell,” Madeley Macedo Siquihua, president of the Aguaje Committee of the Maijuna Nueva Vida community, told Mongabay over WhatsApp voice messages. “It shrivels and they don’t want to buy from us anymore.”

The climbers continue to harvest fruit for two days. After that, the fruit has to be transported by boat from Nueva Vida to Mazan, where it is then taken to the Amazon port city of Iquitos to be sold. There is no room for delays or else the fruit matures and it’s no longer possible to sell them.

The remoteness of the Maijuna communities can make transportation to markets difficult and delays are sometimes unavoidable. There are no roads, meaning community members have to take a long, arduous journey to markets by river. Last year, the Peruvian Amazon was hit by a severe drought that led to record low river levels that affected the navigation of boats. Communities that depend on river access were cut off from markets and could not receive health care, food and water.

Ricardo Rey Rivera Vásquez, coordinator of the Nanay Tigre Mosaic from Nature and Culture International, told Mongabay that climate change can affect the lifespan of the aguaje fruit and the navigability of rivers due to low water levels or floods. If communities are unable to reach the markets quickly enough, or if they are prevented from reaching them altogether, they can lose an entire harvest. Communities also lack basic elementary services, such as phone and internet connections, Rivera said.

While the fruit is popular in cities like Iquitos and Lima, individual communities such as Nueva Vida still face challenges finding buyers.

“Right now, we don’t have a secure market,” Macedo said. “We sell to auctioneers who resell the fruit in Iquitos,” Rios said. The Nueva Vida community are trying to negotiate an agreement with companies who resell the product but have not yet managed to secure a contract.

Attracting investment to grow

At the moment, the Nueva Vida community only sell aguaje pulp. But if they had a processing plant, they could transform it into flour which lasts longer and can be exported to other countries, Rios said.

“For communities, it remains an [income] alternative that faces several challenges so its economic potential is still advancing slowly; their main source of income only comes from domestic consumption,” Barrios said. “For many harvesters, selling aguaje fruit is not enough to meet their needs, as prices often drop when there is oversupply in the market.”

Ricardo said an element to achieve success in this sector involves alliances with the private sector. “The [private sector] is key since the commercial aspect is an area in which neither conservation NGOs nor Indigenous peoples have much experience.”

Because of these challenges, researchers told Mongabay, the aguaje alone is not yet attractive enough for communities dependent on oil, gas and mining industries to shift away from accepting these projects in their territories completely. In Yasuní National Park, representatives of 16 Waorani and Kichwa communities voted ‘no’ against ending oil extraction in their territory during a referendum in 2023 because of the benefits it brought them.

“Our position, head on, is to vote ‘no’ because the oil industry has brought development, education and well-being to all communities,” said Lauro Papa, president of the Aguarico Indigenous Organizations, during the Aguarico Unity Assembly 2023. “Now there are streets, there’s drinking water, we have jobs.”

For the aguaje to bring about competing benefits, Barrios said the aguaje industry needs to develop certifications to validate the sustainable origin of the aguaje and the communities need to be able to reach international markets. Lagneaux and Barrios also said that communities will reap more benefits if they diversify their income streams to include the selling of other resources, such as stingless bee honey.

“I don’t think any single species can replace large-scale extractive activities, especially when it comes to resources with a growing global demand ([like] gold, gas, oil),” Lagneaux said. “However, aguaje could be part of a diverse package of solutions to provide alternative sources of income to rural populations.”

Rios told Mongabay the Nueva Vida community has observed positive results since they began to harvest the aguaje sustainably. “We’re harvesting right now because we’ve taken care of the [trees],” he said. “This is very important for us and it’s important to involve other communities that don’t yet have these tools so as not to destroy the forest and nature.”

Banner image: In the Amazon regions there are local enterprises for the conservation and processing of water. Image by Profonanpe.

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Citations:

Gilmore, M. P., Endress, B. A. & Horn, C. M. (2013). The socio-cultural importance of Mauritia flexuosa palm swamps (aguajales) and implications for multi-use management in two Maijuna communities of the Peruvian Amazon. Journal of Ethnobiology and Ethnomedicine, 9-29. doi:10.1186/1746-4269-9-29

Horn, C. M., Gilmore, M. P., & Endress, B. A. (2012). Ecological and socio-economic factors influencing aguaje (Mauritia flexuosa) resource management in two indigenous communities in the Peruvian Amazon. Forest Ecology and Management, 267: 93-103. doi:10.1016/j.foreco.2011.11.040

Lagneaux, E., Jansen, M., Quaedvlieg, J., Zuidema, P. A., Anten, N. P. R., Roca, M. R. G., Corvera-Gomringer, R., & Kettle, C. J. (2021). Diversity Bears Fruit: Evaluating the Economic Potential of Undervalued Fruits for an Agroecological Restoration Approach in the Peruvian Amazon. Sustainability, 13(8), 4582. doi:10.3390/su13084582

Manzi, M., & Coomes, O. T. (2009). Managing Amazonian palms for community use: A case of aguaje palm (Mauritia flexuosa) in Peru. Forest Ecology & Management, 257: 510-517. doi:10.1016/j.foreco.2008.09.038

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