Cooperativism and Agroforestry in the Eastern Amazon: The Case of Tomé-Açu

An agricultural cooperative in the eastern Amazon region composed primarily of Japanese immigrants and their descendants practices agroforestry with black pepper, cacao, and tropical fruits as the principal crops. Its success is largely contingent upon institutional flexibility and long-term economic and environmental sustainability. It has developed strategies for responding to environmental and economic changes and constraints and has discovered important principles of adaptation—diversification, innovation, and shared decision making. Ethnic identity has also played an important role by helping unite members and by linking the cooperative to Japanese markets and financial capital. The next test of the cooperative's ingenuity and flexibility may be whether its model can be extended to non-Japanese-Brazilian small producers.