Implications of smallholder livelihoods for scaling oil palm agroforestry in Brazilian Eastern Amazon

Despite its economic potential, oil palm has earned a bad reputation for its negative environmental and mixed social impacts. In the Eastern Brazilian Amazon, oil palm production has expanded rapidly over the past decade. Meanwhile, in the same landscape, Agroforestry Systems (AFS) have been widely promoted as a solution to achieve economic growth coupled with socio-environmental benefits for smallholders. Our study seeks to shed light on pathways for reconciling oil palm production with farmer livelihoods. We randomly sampled 198 smallholders in the municipality of Tomé-Açu, Pará, Brazil. Our findings point to diverse livelihoods and widely varying yearly income, averaging USD 13,100. Different types of AFS were adopted by 85 % of farmers in our sample, in contrast to just 11 % adopting monocrop oil palm. Almost one third of on-farm income and produced food came from AFS, which mostly contributed to achieving life aspirations. Key indicators on financial and physical capitals (technology level, housing, total income and land size) indicate economic success as most households achieved intermediate levels of living standard. We conclude that family farmers can successfully adopt AFS and that oil palm producers overall are less likely to have low economic success. An overwhelming majority of farmers would like to expand their AFS, but very few would choose to include oil palm. We argue that the expansion of oil palm-based AFS hinges on the extent to which the prevailing business model and technological package can provide sufficient resources to reduce family farmer risks, including: credit conditions, plantation size, species selection and systems suited to farmer livelihood objectives and constraints.

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