Acai berries are one of the most abundant fruits found in the rainforests of Brazil. However, deforestation is ravaging the once vast supply of acai palms which are imperative to producing enough acai berries to fulfill the increased global demand. Read on to learn how you can help save the rainforests.
Palm trees (including the acai palm) are monocots or flowering plants, whereas deciduous trees are dicots. If you cut off the top of a dicot the rest of the plant will continue to grow by spouting new branches. However, if you cut off the top of a monocot, the plant will simply die.
Being that the acai palm is a monocot it seems crazy that anyone would cut off the top of the tree and inhibit its ability to product acai berries for decades, even centuries to come. But they do.
The acai palm, in addition to producing acai berries, is also a great source for palm hearts, also know as “hearts of palm”. In the United States hearts of palm are popular additions to salads and pizza. The “hearts of palm” is located at the very top of the tree in a location called the crown. The crown is also the part of the palm tree that produces the acai berry. To harvest the small portion of the tree necessary to produce hearts of palm, you must remove the entire top of the palm tree, killing the plant and discontinuing its future production of acai berries.
In March of 2002 Mirian Jordan, a journalist for The Wall Street Journal did a front page article on the acai palm being harvested for hearts of palm.
Ms. Jordan reported that “The heart comes from a 12 to 16 inch span at the top of the 65 foot palm’s trunk. Once the heart is removed, the tree dies. One tree, which can be as much as 100 years old, has enough heart to fill just two 14-oz. cans. The cans retail for about $3.99 apiece in the U.S.”
The article went on to indicate that the illegal harvesting of the heart of palm results in poachers removing the rain forest of 5,000 to 10,000 acai palm trees each and every week. According to members of the Brazilian law enforcement each poacher destroys about 50 trees per day for a salary of only $1.00 per tree. The destruction of the Amazon rain forest for hearts of palm has been going on for so long that only a small amount of the original Brazilian rain forest remains.
Majority of the locals advocate to keep palm trees entact because of the economic value of a palm tree if it can produce valuable fruit, such as the acai berry, for decades or even centuries to come. According to the government of Brazil, 2007 was the second worst year in history for rain forest deforestation. Let’s prevent that from continuing into the future!
By purchasing an acai berry product, not only will you benefit from the nutritional benefits the product has to offer, but you can also help provide an increased demand for the product and create further incentive to help Brazilians and advocacy groups protect what remains of the rain forest.
So buy Acai…and please don’t eat hearts of palm! See our choice for the best acai berry product.
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