Açaí, the Amazon’s Favorite Berry, Finds Future in Biochar

When Brazil’s government decided to locate COP30 in Belém, it was no accident – the state of Pará is the gateway to the vast Amazon River basin. Paraense cuisine is synonymous with the açaí berry, marketed around the world as a superfood. However, the processing of this palm fruit also creates significant amounts of biomass waste. Now, a group of start-ups is seeking a way to create new opportunities for açaí producers by converting this waste to biochar.

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95% of Brazil’s açaí is produced in the state of Pará, which hosted the United Nations COP30 climate summit last month. Signs for açaí delicacies are everywhere, and Marco Failache Filho, Founder of AmazTrace, estimates that at least 15,000 liters of açaí will have been consumed by the participants during the two-week summit. 

However, only 20% of an açaí berry is fruit, with the remainder being a hard, dense seed. “It’s a waste problem,” Filho told Earth.Org. “So we discovered that we can make biochar out of the açaí seeds.” 

Açaí berries are harvested by hand from 20-meter palm trees, a skill taught from father to son, after which they must be processed within just 12 to 24 hours before they rot in the tropical climate. They are either pulped or frozen by agricultural collectives before being sold on to distributors and retailers.

The $1-billion açaí industry serves both domestic and international customers, with local consumers buying açaí pulp from grocery stores and açaí product retailers buying frozen berries. Popular açaí products include bowls consisting of pureed fruit with toppings, ice creams or sorbets, drinks, and smoothies. Whether the berries are de-seeded at the cooperative or at the retail level, a significant quantity of waste remains after the seeds are extracted.

Amaztrace supports farmers and cooperatives seeking to transform this agricultural waste into biochar. In this process, the cooperative heats the waste using a low-oxygen pyrolysis kiln until it becomes a charcoal-like product. The process can be done at the industrial level or even at the artisanal level, using a small-scale Kon-Tiki kiln. 

While biochar has uses as an agricultural input, its future value is seen to lie in carbon sequestration, which can be sold for carbon credits. However, in order to ensure that the biochar is properly managed, it must be monitored and verified. Amaztrace provides this service, adding sensors to the ovens and performing satellite monitoring. The company has created a technology for smallholder farms entirely managed via WhatsApp, which is used by 96% of farmers in Brazil, through which even illiterate producers can issue invoices that include standardized product information, QR codes, and other relevant documentation.

In turn, the company partners with Swiss start-up Reilo to manage financing and sell the biochar credits to customers from the voluntary carbon markets. 

“We get the carbon rights, while farms get 70% of the whole revenue. Future revenue is generated as a security system for loans through nature based carbon credits. So from day one, they can access product capital. We use predicted revenue as collateral for smallholder financing,” Rahel Guggenbuehl, Founder of Reilo, told Earth.Org, 

Customers for biochar include “insetting” customers, where the buyer of the açaí  pre-finances the biochar production. However, corporate entities participating in the voluntary carbon market are the main buyers, with Microsoft as the single largest customer. 

“The methodologies for Article 6.4 [of the Paris Agreement] are not there yet for biochar, so you can’t participate in compliance markets. But biochar is already being sold as a kind of agricultural input,” said Filho. “It can also be applied to cement, and stored in real estate or housing. We’re now validating the process, and the goal is to validate it with local institutions.” 

The two start-ups will launch a pilot in 2026, with 12 producers who have 100 hectares of forest, and start to test the biochar and carbon removal process in the field.

Featured image: Wikimedia Commons.