Women babaçu breakers are one of the most marginalized groups of workers in Brazil and their source of livelihood is now in danger. During the 1990s, a collection of local grassroots organizations formed a movement, the MIQCB, to voice the concerns and demands of the nut breakers, improve their living conditions and challenge society’s perceptions of their status and value.
The babaçu breakers live in the 18 million hectares of forest between the Amazon and the semi-dry areas in the northeast of the country. Here, few public policies guarantee peoples’ basic rights and land distribution is extremely inequitable.
The babaçu nut has many practical and commercial benefits - from natural medicine, food products and roof toppings to cosmetics and cattle fodder. Although the income the women glean from the babaçu nut is tiny - about 60 pence per day - it is often the only monetary income a family has.
However, this is now under threat. Large-scale commercial farmers - who do not view the babaçu nut as sufficiently profitable - want to burn the forests to clear the area for soya farming or cattle breeding. They have tried to charge women workers or to prevent them from collecting nuts by erecting barbed wire fences or hiring gunmen.
The babaçu breakers also face discrimination because they are descendants of slaves or indigenous people and because they are women.
The MIQCB wants to give the nut breakers a voice, to protect their forests from being chopped down and to gain official permission to pick the nuts – which would otherwise lie unused - for free.
With the support of War on Want, the MIQCB launched and won a mass campaign to protect the babaçu. In 2007 the Brazilian Congress passed a law that gives the nut breakers free access to the palms, and protects the trees from destruction. War on Want will now help the MIQCB to monitor the implementation of the law and build the movement's links within Brazil and its communication with other organisations both at home and internationally.
| MIQCB's accomplishments |
- Successfully lobbied for a national law that protects the nut breakers' access to the babaçu palms, and shields the trees from destruction.
- The MIQCB has established important links with local, regional and national government and has had meetings to discuss the law for free access to the babaçu forests, develop local partnerships for procurement of babaçu products, and to hold the government accountable for illegal logging and forest destruction
- Workshops and training have been organised on leadership, financial accounting, contracting and procurement, organisational skills and accountability
- Communication has been improved between the regions, with women sharing technical and organisational expertise
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| The Facts |
- Babaçu is the third most important oil palm in the world, but cheap imported Malaysian oil is destroying the industry in Brazil
- In the Brazilian regions of Pará, Tocantins, Piauí and Maranhão at least 350,000 people pick and break the babaçu coconut to sustain their families
- Women babaçu breakers usually collect and break about five kilos of babaçu per day, which sells for a meagre 7p per kilo to the middlemen
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 |  | MIQCB
For more information on the MIQCB and their activities, visit their website (currently only in Portuguese). | |
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