The babaçu nut breakers live in the 18 million hectares of forest between the Amazon and the semi-dry areas in the northeast of Brazil. In the states or provinces of Pará, Tocantins, Piauí and Maranhão at least 350,000 people pick and break the babaçu coconut to sustain their families.

There are few public policies here to guarantee peoples' basic rights however, especially those of women and land distribution remains extremely inequitable. During the 1990s, a collection of local grassroots organizations formed a movement, the Movement of Babaçu nut Breakers (MIQCB), to voice the concerns and demands of women, improve their living conditions and challenge society's perceptions of their status and value.

We are now supporting War on Wants partnership with the MIQCB. Our funding is aimed at specifically improving their independence by reducing the current dependency on exploitative middlemen. By providing basic equipment to process the nuts for food and oil, they'll be able to bring this stage in-house which should help raise their income by approximately 50%.

The men in the family are often farmers or labourers, who harvest just enough food for the family. To provide for other family needs including healthcare and education, they depend on the additional income from the Babaçu nut. The women walk for miles through the Babaçu forest to gather the nut, and the extraction of the core to make oil and a type of flour is a laborious process.

All parts of the nut are used, with both 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 five kilos of babaçu raising about 60 pence per day - it is often the only monetary income a family has.

Even this is now under threat, however. 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 prevent the womenfrom collecting nuts by erecting barbed wire fences or hiring gunmen.

War on Want's partnership with the MIQCB is wideranging, but the part of the project we are funding is one that will have the most immediate impact. It will be carried out and monitored by MIQCB, and the activities will focus on delivering and setting up the processing units for Babaçu communities.

There will be training from a technician and continuous support in the use of the processors. Each unit will support one community of 80 families, so directly benefiting 400 people each year to extract the oil and food from the nut.

The project's current progress has been more than encouraging:

• Since the project began, MIQCB has purchased the material for the processing units of the Babaçu nut. Altogether, MIQCB has purchased two grinders, one dryer, 13 buckets of oil and 13 sets of knives and machetes.
• The grinders have been transported to the communities and the hatchets to keep the machines have been built.
• Four women have been trained on the use and maintenance of the machines, two per community to share the responsibility of operating the machine.
• Each community has elected a steering committee formed by 10 women. These women are in charge of overseeing the process of installation and work of the machinery.
• A motorcycle has been purchased as it provides easier access to the communities than a car. Accessing the communities with cars has proven to be difficult due to the state of the roads in the area.

One obstacle that became apparent earlier in the year was the lack of access to electricity in the communities. Consequently, MIQCB has liaised with a local electricity company to install a reliable and ongoing electricity supply. However, due to the fact that the machines are for the use of the community, the company only issues commercial contracts, which effectively doubled the cost of service.

In order that it is still feasible, all the people in the community have access to the machine and each family pays R$ 10 pence per kilo grounded (which equals to £0.03).

Political aspirations

With the support of War on Want, the MIQCB has completed the first ever research into the destruction of the babaçu forests. Based on this, they have launched a mass campaign to preserve the babaçu forests and ensure legislation is implemented to protect this by law.

Although it is not directly linked to to what we are funding, MIQCB members have been actively participating of the campaign for "Free access to the Babaçu" which involved active lobbying at municipal, state and national level.

In July 2007, MIQCB had an audience in the national congress to discuss a federal law initiative to guarantee the free access to the Babaçu palm, making the cutting or burning of the palm trees illegal.

300 women took Babaçu products to the capital Brasilia, (oil, soap, flour, and handcrafts), to sell and oneMIQCB member was able to report takings of R$40 (about £10) at once, more than she had ever earned on one day before.

Dije, head of the nut breakers.

'We rise at 6 am and prepare the water for breakfast. At 7.30, we head into the forest, sometimes walking many kilometers. When we reach the palms, we begin to gather the nuts from the forest floor. Depending on the distance back to the camp, the nuts are either carried by the women in baskets or are strapped to the back of a mule.'

Once back, they begin the hard work: 'We have small axe which we use to break the Babaçu,' says Dije.

The babaçu nut has many practical and commercial benefits from natural medicine, food products and roof toppings to cosmetics and cattle fodder. But to the women who collect and break the nuts, its uses are far greater.

'We use the nut for animal feed and to make baskets and food for us. It has several parts, the outer husk, the fruit inside and then the seed. We learn how to use the nut from a very young age. There are no rule books or instructions, I learned from my mother and she learned from her mother', explains Dije.

Although the income the women provide from the nut breaking is limited (approximately raising 60p a day) it is often the only source of income for a family. 'The price is extremely variable,' she answers. 'If you sell to the middlemen, who then sell on to processing plants, you get the equivalent of about 1.5 Euros a day. If you're lucky enough to be part of a co-operative, you can sometimes get three times as much.'

Dije explains that as a co-op, they have the capacity to process the nuts, and sell on the oil to companies like the Body Shop. Without a co-op, the middlemen can get away with paying below the odds, and then sell on to processing plants.

Providing the means to process the nuts themselves is possible with our support.

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