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This paper outlines the importance of the small-scale extractive sector to extremely impoverished households in rural areas of tropical Brazil. Extractive activities are important as inputs to household reproduction, and are critical as a source of cash income. In the case study we analyze, small-scale extraction was roughly equivalent to wage labor and to agriculture in its contribution to household income. We suggest that in rural development analysis, a significant source of both use and exchange values has been overlooked. This issue is of particular concern for three main reasons. First, the importance of small-scale extraction is more pronounced among the more impoverished. Second, extraction is a major source of cash for women, who are often denied access to alternative means of acquiring income in rural areas. Finally, current rural development programs are actively undermining access to the resources and often imply their destruction. Through a detailed social and ecological analysis of the babassu palm/shifting cultivational system in Northeast Brazil, we show the interdependence of regional biological and human agricultural systems. Changes in social relations and technology can undermine the bases for the sustainability of the stable interactions between shifting cultivators and palms.
Hecht et al. (Tue,) studied this question.