Center aims to improve quality of life in the Amazon with digital technologies for the açaí and honey chains

The Agrotechnological District of Breves, in the Brazilian state of Pará, was created as part of Semear Digital, a Science Center for Development led by EMBRAPA Digital Agriculture and supported by FAPESP.

By André Julião, from Breves  |  Agência FAPESP* – At the age of 21, William Batista is a digital technology enthusiast. Despite the slow Internet available in the community where he lives – Jupatituba, in Breves, a municipality located on the island of Marajó (northern Brazil), belonging to the state of Pará – he uses his cell phone to post videos and study for his teaching course.

But the future teacher wants to go further. He hopes to use technology to take care of his family’s land, where he grows açaí. “With a drone, we could map and identify the most suitable areas for planting, without necessarily having to go to the site, which is often difficult to access,” says Batista.

The demand was one of many heard by researchers from the Science Center for Development in Digital Agriculture (Semear Digital) during a visit to the community in October 2024, accompanied by Agência FAPESP.

Semear Digital, based at EMBRAPA Digital Agriculture in Campinas, is one of the Science Centers for Development (SCDs) supported by FAPESP. Its goal is to bring connectivity, training and the development of digital agricultural technologies to small and medium producers in the five regions of Brazil, through ten Agrotechnological Districts (DATs) (read more at: agencia.fapesp.br/41223 and agencia.fapesp.br/50387). 

“This DAT was selected based on a methodology in which we evaluated economic, environmental and social indicators among the more than 5,000 municipalities in Brazil. Breves was the one that presented the most challenges in the Amazon, both in terms of connectivity and the biome itself,” explains Silvia Massruhá, president of the Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation (EMBRAPA) and coordinator of Semear Digital.

The project also includes the Center for Research and Development in Telecommunications (CPQD), the Luiz de Queiroz College of Agriculture of the University of São Paulo (ESALQ-USP), the Agronomic Institute (IAC), the Institute of Agricultural Economics (IEA), the National Telecommunications Institute (INATEL) and the Federal University of Lavras (UFLA).

The Breves DAT will focus on the açaí production chain and the management of native bees. Currently, EMBRAPA Eastern Amazon, based in Belém, carries out similar activities in this and other municipalities on the island of Marajó. For this reason, the company’s unit will be the focal point of the project in the locality.

Açaí fruits sold at a street market in Belém, from where they go to be processed (photo: Daniel Antônio/Agência FAPESP)

Massruhá says that during their activities with producers, the researchers noticed that people were taking their cell phones into the fields, even though they didn’t actually have a function in the activity. That’s when they saw the potential for developing applications that could support, for example, the minimum impact management of native açaí plantations, a technology developed by EMBRAPA.

In this case, an application called Manejatech Açaí was created, which makes it possible to inventory the açaí trees in an area and apply the most appropriate management methods, such as the distance between plants and the number of trees of other species that should be in the same space. The application works even without Internet access.

“The information used to be collected by researchers, taken to EMBRAPA, processed, and brought back on another visit. Today, with technology, you can do this instantly, speeding up the process between research and technology adoption,” notes Massruhá.

Açaí and honey

Semear Digital will also support a recent activity in the region with great potential for generating income for farmers: meliponiculture. The breeding of native stingless bees helps to conserve species of this social insect that are threatened precisely by human activity, while at the same time increasing the productivity of açaí plantations by between 30% and 70%, depending on the species and the distance of the hives from the açaí tree’s flowers.

Enilson Solano (left) and Daniel Pereira, of EMBRAPA Eastern Amazon, present bee breeding to the president of EMBRAPA, Silvia Massruhá (photo: Daniel Antônio/Agência FAPESP)

“The stingless bees have a very close bond with the açaí crop, mainly because many of them are small bees, so they can pollinate the flowers of the açaí trees. There’s an ancient relationship between the people of the region and the bees, but this knowledge has been lost due to a number of factors,” explains Daniel Santiago Pereira, a researcher at EMBRAPA Eastern Amazon.

The researcher adds that among the different species of native bees, many of which are exclusive to the island of Marajó, some produce honeys with bioactive properties that are different from those found in the best known honeys, which could have great market appeal.

“Connectivity comes to facilitate interaction with as many producers as possible, enabling this knowledge to be re-appropriated by these populations,” Pereira believes.

EMBRAPA Eastern Amazon currently has two digital applications for meliponiculture. Infobee aggregates information on the different species and management methods. Zapbee uses artificial intelligence to allow beekeepers to ask questions via WhatsApp to a robot about breeding bees, both native and introduced.

“We’re improving the technology so that people can send voice messages and receive audio responses, making it more accessible even for people with low levels of education,” says Michell Costa, an analyst at EMBRAPA Eastern Amazon.

Demands

With around 40,000 square kilometers (km²), the island of Marajó is about 97% natural areas, making an important contribution to climate regulation and the maintenance of biodiversity.

The municipality of Breves, with just over 106,000 inhabitants, has about half of its population in the urban area, which occupies about 9.3 km², one-thousandth of the municipality’s territory of over 9,000 km² (the area of the city of São Paulo, for example, is just over 1,500 km²).

In 2022, only 6.1% of households were connected to the sewage system and 9% of the population had a formal job. On the Human Development Index (HDI), the municipality has a score of 0.503, just above neighboring Melgaço, the worst-performing city in Brazil (0.418), and well below first-placed São Caetano do Sul, in the state of São Paulo (0.862). However, the HDI figures available for Brazil are from 2010.

Like the other nine Semear Digital Agrotechnological Districts distributed throughout Brazil, the municipality was selected using a methodology developed at the Institute of Agricultural Economics, an agency of the São Paulo State Department of Agriculture and Supply.

Among the more than 5,000 Brazilian municipalities, eight variables such as education, economy, infrastructure, and land structure were cross-referenced to create 33 indicators. The idea was that in the selected municipalities, the implementation of the project could have a real impact on the population and agriculture. From a list of the most suitable municipalities in the North region, Breves was selected, taking into account additional factors such as local governance and agricultural activity.

“This is a DAT with very different characteristics from the others selected in Brazil because the basis of its agricultural economy is extractivism. It also has difficulties with mobility between communities. We’re certain that digital agriculture and connectivity will have a major impact not only on the riverside population but also on the entire açaí and honey value chain,” says Priscilla Fagundes, a researcher at the IEA.

The main task on the first visit was precisely to assess the needs of the population. The idea was to understand how digital agriculture could help in the production of açaí, the region’s main product, and in meliponiculture, which is still in its infancy in the area.

Celso Vegro, an IEA researcher, conducts an interview in a community in Breves (photo: Daniel Antônio/Agência FAPESP)

“As in all the other DATs we’ve installed, the first need reported here is access to quality Internet. One of the ideas is to use connectivity to improve the sale of açaí and the purchase of inputs, not to mention how it could improve access to health and education,” points out Édson Bolfe, a researcher at EMBRAPA Digital Agriculture.

During the group dynamics in which they participated with community representatives, the researchers also identified a need for traceability and certification of production, one of Semear Digital’s thematic research areas. Others include artificial intelligence, remote sensing and precision agriculture.

“The açaí harvested here goes through two or three intermediaries before it reaches the consumer. The producers would like the quality of their product to be recognized in Belém and in the other cities where it’s consumed,” says Bolfe.

Based on the visit, a report prepared by the CPQD identified the main opportunities for installing a better quality connection in the area. The project does not install the Internet in the communities but works with local businesses and government to make it happen.

“In addition to satellite connection options, which are currently at their operational limits, we see the implementation of a terrestrial connectivity infrastructure as viable. The proposal involves installing a 50-meter-high antenna on a previously identified plot of land to provide 5G coverage. This configuration would make it possible to reach a radius of approximately 10 km from the antenna site, benefiting most of the communities in the region,” points out Fuad Abinader, a researcher from the CPQD in Manaus, who was present in the delegation.

With the installation of ten DATs in the five regions of the country, Semear Digital hopes to bring public policy models for connectivity to rural areas. The success of the Breves DAT, in turn, could bring this model to the Amazon region.

“It’s something that really excites me and is at the root of this project: making digital development drive social development. The idea isn’t only to increase productivity and add value to forest products, but also to improve people’s quality of life,” concludes EMBRAPA’s president.

The delegation that participated in the inauguration of the Breves Agrotechnological District (DAT) in October (photo: Daniel Antônio/Agência FAPESP)

* Daniel Antonio collaborated.