Children in Brazil are climbing 70-foot-high trees so you can eat açaí berries

In Macapá, Brazil, children climb trees as tall as 70 feet without a harness to pick açaí berries that are sold around the world.

At the port of Igarapé da Fortaleza, in the far north of Brazil, dock workers unload large orange-red sacks from small wooden boats. Small dark berries scatter around the dock, staining everything purple and making the pavement slippery. After being washed, processed, and blended, each sack will make about five gallons of açaí pulp that will go into bowls, smoothies, and freeze-dried supplements. In Spring, when most fruit is not yet ripe, each 130-pound sack is being sold to wholesalers for about $80, more than double the price it sells for when it is in season. Buyers may or may not know that the superfood they are purchasing to sell to multinationals may have been picked by children — no one is checking. Eighty dollars would be a fortune for harvesters to take home, but they still need to pay the “crossers,” who provide boat transportation from nearby villages to the jungle and back, and the landowners whose trees they harvested. It has not always been this way. Growing demand has transformed what was once a mostly local industry into an international operation that puts pressure on communities that have, for decades, depended on the fruit for economic survival and their own subsistence. In 2012, the state of Pará, which produces more than 90% of Brazil’s açaí, exported 39 tons of the fruit; in 2022, 8,158 tons were exported generating over $26 million in revenue, according to industry data. As a result, children are being sent on dangerous journeys to harvest the fruit, climbing trees as tall as 70 feet without harnesses, and exposing themselves to the perils of the swamps of the rainforest, including venomous snakes, scorpions, and jaguars. Lucas Oliveira, 13, of the Fazendinha village outside Macapá, is one of these children. He goes to school, but he also helps his brother Wengleston pick açaí whenever he can to help feed their seven other siblings. CNN joined them on a typical harvest day in early March. They woke up at 3am, headed to a motorboat with a handful of other boys and young men, and crossed the Amazon river, the largest in the world. Once on the other side, they jumped into canoes to reach a private property where açaí palms grow in the wild. Lucas walked through the jungle using a machete as big as his arm to slice large leaves and branches. As he cleared the path, he looked up as much as he looked ahead, scanning each palm tree in the canopy. “Here, this one’s got some,” Lucas said, dropping his tarp bag.